Eight districts have confirmed human and cattle anthrax infections and meat consumption ahead of the Islamic festival of Eid, set to start Friday, has fallen sharply as panicked consumers turn their back on beef, officials said.

“We’re still getting reports of new anthrax infections — the number of cases could soar,” said Mahmudur Rahman, a director of health ministry. “In one district 66 people were infected in one day,” he said.

The government this week put livestock and health officials on “red alert”, suspended all leave in the livestock department and sent emergency veterinarian teams to affected districts.

Officials have described the outbreak as the biggest in the country’s history, although there have been no deaths so far.

Anthrax is a potentially lethal bacterium that exists naturally in the soil and commonly infects livestock which ingest or inhale its spores while grazing.

It can be transmitted to humans who handle or eat infected animals.

Scores of cows have died in the current outbreak, which started August 18, causing panic among farmers and consumers.

The authorities have set up checkpoints across the country in an effort to prevent diseased meat reaching the capital Dhaka, said livestock department deputy director Mosaddek Hossain.

“We have sent vets to markets to screen animals. We want to calm the public down. Already meat consumption has declined sharply as panicky consumers are avoiding beef,” he said.

From Agence France Presse, and DawnNews, September 8, 2010

The suspects are accused of helping local businessmen to acquire documents to export lumber products to China in exchange for money, Zoya Nekrasova said.

Investigators believe that the criminal group was created in March 2008. The suspects were reportedly charging “clients” between 3,000 rubles and 9,000 rubles ($97-$292) as a fee for one freight wagon of lumber.

It took investigators 10 months to carry out a preliminary investigation, the spokeswoman said. Two police officers have been detained, while the economic crimes directorate’s head and another officer have signed a recognizance not to leave, she said.

A criminal case is to be submitted to the court after the charges are approved by the local prosecutor, she added.

From RIA Novosti, September 9, 2010.

The CEO and major shareholder of a Russian bank was shot dead on Wednesday evening in southwestern Moscow, a spokesman for Russia’s investigation committee said.

Mikael Daudov, 66, was shot in the head with a small-caliber gun while leaving his office on Leninsky Prospekt. Daudov owned an 18.34 percent stake in the small Moscow-based bank, Lesprombank.

“The crime scene is being examined, all the necessary procedures will be carried out,” Vladimir Markin said.

He added that two spent cartridge cases, of .22 (5.56mm) caliber, were found at the scene.

Police also studied footage from nearby CCTV cameras to identify the attacker.

Meanwhile, a popular tabloid, Komsomolskaya Pravda, reported that the attacker shot the man in the eye during a quarrel.

“Eyewitnesses say the businessman quarreled with someone… His opponent took a gun out of his pocket and shot Daudov in the face. The bullet hit him in the eye and injured his brain. The businessman died immediately,” the newspaper wrote on its website.

From RIA Novosti, September 9, 2010. Photo by Andrey Stenin, RIA.

A Russian circus touring Australia has dropped an act in which a performer swallows a live fish then regurgitates it after complaints that it was in poor taste and inhumane.

Great Moscow Circus general manager Greg Hall said Wednesday that the fish-gobbling part of the show was removed on Monday after the New South Wales state government informed it that the act breached animal protection laws.

The act was brought to the attention of authorities by some circus patrons who lodged official complaints about animal cruelty.

Hall said similar acts were performed in circuses around the world, but that the circus would revamp the act following the complaints and not use live fish for the Australian shows.

The state’s Industry and Investment department said it had received a complaint and ordered the circus to discontinue the act.

“Circuses operating in New South Wales must comply with prescribed standards for the welfare of animals,” the department said in a statement.

Animal welfare activists welcomed the decision.

“Scientific research has shown that fish are capable of suffering,” said Glenys Oogjes, executive director of nongovernment group Animals Australia. “Circuses continue to claim that performing animal acts are educational. Far from educational, this was an inhumane and foolish act which reflected badly on the Moscow Circus.”

http://www.moscowcircus.biz/

From Kyiv Post, September 9, 2010.

Mullah Omar says NATO-led forces are losing the war in Afghanistan and his fighters are close to victory.

The Afghan Taliban leader has said his fighters were close to victory in driving foreign forces out of the country.

In a message on Wednesday marking the end of the Muslim fasting month Ramadan, Mullah Omar called on Afghans to redouble their struggle and push for foreign troops to withdraw, saying the NATO-led coalition was losing the war.

He said victory “over the invading infidels is now imminent” attributing the progress to “belief in the help of Allah and unity among ourselves”.

“Put all your strength and planning behind the task of driving away the invaders and regaining independence of the country,” he told Afghan fighters.

‘Complete failure’

He said “those military experts who have framed strategies of the invasion of Afghanistan or are now engaged in hammering out new strategies, admit themselves that all their strategies are nothing but a complete failure”.

The Taliban leader added that the occupying foreign forces “are now under pressures from their people due to the growing and heavy military expenditures, casualties and the fruitlessness of the war”.

Mullah Omar called on President Barack Obama to withdraw troops “unconditionally and as soon as possible” saying it is “the best option for regional stability”.

“The expansion, momentum and success of this jihadi resistance … has now approached close to its destination,” Reuters news agency quoted the Taliban leader as saying in an email to media.

In a section addressing US citizens, he said: “You should know that your rulers have continuously told you lies since the beginning of the aggression on Afghanistan until this very day.

“They have wasted hundreds of billion(s) of dollars of your tax money in the shape of financial expenditures and your manpower in Afghanistan and have still been wasting them. You shall be witness to another economic melt-down.”

Afghan strategy

Mullah Omar was one of the leaders of the Taliban that ruled Afghanistan with an iron fist from 1996 to the end of 2001.

He has been underground since the movement was driven out of power by the US invasion.

The NATO-led mission in Afghanistan has swelled to 150,000 soldiers as part of a concerted strategy to defeat the Taliban.

Last month, General David Petraeus, the commander of US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, said he saw “areas of progress” in the war and that momentum by fighters had been checked in their strongholds in Kandahar and Helmand.

Violence in Afghanistan is at its worst since Mullah Omar and his movement were overthrown in late 2001, with a record number of foreign troop casualties and soaring civilian deaths.

Obama ordered in a further 30,000 US troops to Afghanistan last December following a review of the war and the last of those troops have now arrived.

The US has also said it will begin drawing down troops from July next year, a move many say has emboldened the Taliban.

From Al Jazeera, Reuters, and Agencies, September 9, 2010.

Photo from Gallo/Getty.

North Korea has marked its founding 62 years ago on Thursday with patriotic songs and commentaries, and national flags decorating street corners, as speculation mounted over political succession plans.

In Pyonyang, thousands marked the anniversary by placing flowers at the foot of a giant statue of Kim Il-sung, North Korea’s founder, and father of current leader Kim Jong-il.

The foundation day comes as speculation mounts over Kim’s health and possible successor.

Posters were also put up announcing the party meeting, although an exact date for the gathering had not yet been disclosed.

By Thursday morning there had been no word on whether the meeting, due to take place in “early September”, had begun.

State media reported on Monday that delegates to the Workers’ Party were gathering in Pyongyang to elect new party leaders, the North’s first major political conference in 30 years.

It is reported that Kim will use the meeting to promote his son Kim Jong-un to a key position.

Little is known about Kim Jong-un, including his exact age, and there are no confirmed photos of him as an adult.

Succession plan

Kim Jong-il himself took over leadership after his father died of heart failure in 1994, a handover that was communism’s first hereditary transfer of power.

North Korea observers say the party meeting may have been postponed because of Kim’s deteriorating health and recent devastating flooding.

“It’s because of Kim Jong-il’s health. There is no other reason,” Ha Tae-keung, the chief of Open Radio for North Korea, a Seoul-based station specialising in North Korea affairs, said, citing unidentified sources in Pyongyang.

“He has to be in the conference at least five hours even though he will be sitting most of time. I think he’s trying to find a day when he is well enough to do that.”

Kim, said to be suffering from diabetes and a kidney ailment, reportedly suffered a stroke in 2008, sparking fears about instability and a possible power struggle in the nuclear-armed country if he were to die without anointing a successor.

The founding anniversary is a major holiday in North Korea, along with the birthdays of Kim and his father, who have ruled the country surrounded by strong personality cults.

North Korean state television aired patriotic songs calling for loyalty to Kim, calling him a “great, friendly general”.

The country’s main Rodong Sinmun newspaper also issued a lengthy editorial urging its 24 million people to unite behind Kim to support his “military-first policy” and achieve an inter-Korean unification.

From Al Jazeera and Agencies, September 9, 2010.

Prison break by armed rebel group Boko Haram raises new fears of violence as security is tightened in country’s north.

A prison break by an armed group known as Boko Haram has raised fears of renewed violence in northern Nigeria just months before elections.

The group staged a raid on the prison on Tuesday night in the town of Bauchi, freeing more than 100 followers.

The attack left the prison in ruins and showed the group, which is seeking to institute sharia [Islamic law] in the country, had access to the sophisticated weapons it needed to overpower prison guards.

Nigeria’s interior minister said on Wednesday the rebels had “overwhelming firepower” and guards were unable to stop them.

“Due to the overwhelming firepower which the attackers deployed on their mission, they were easily able to overcome the stiff resistance which was put up by the gallant prison officers who attempted to block the progress of the assault on the prison,” Emmanuel Ihenacho, the minister, said.

The attackers, wielding AK-47 assault rifles, fired on the prison guards as they were breaking their daily Ramadan fast on Tuesday evening, Al Jazeera’s Yvonne Ndege reported from Abuja, Nigeria’s capital.

Between 800 and 900 of the prisoners broke out of the jail, including 200 inmates believed to be Boko Haram members, Ndege said. Four people were wounded in the clash.

Authorities have arrested 13 suspects in connection with the prison break, Ndege said, although residents in and around Bauchi remain afraid that Boko Haram will launch other attacks.

Security tightened

Danlami Yar’Adua, Bauchi’s police commissioner, told the Reuters news agency that two of the dead were “bodyguards” and that the attackers had set part of the prison on fire.

One Bauchi resident told Reuters the attackers had numbered around 50. Police and military officers manned new checkpoints on the road out of Bauchi on Wednesday, hoping to catch escapees, the Associated Press reported.

Boko Haram – which means “Western education is sin” in the northern Hausa language – was blamed for riots and attacks in the north last summer that left more than 700 people dead.

Following the killing of several policemen by motorcycle-riding assailants over the past week, the government has tightened security in the north and northeast, and residents are fearful of a new wave of violence.

The Tuesday prison break coincided with the government’s announcement that it would hold its presidential election on January 22.

For a timeline of clashes in Nigeria:

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/africa/2010/01/201012314018187505.html

From Al Jazeera, September 9, 2010. Photo by AFP.

“During war there are no civilians,” that’s what “Yossi,” an Israeli military (IDF) training unit leader simply stated during a round of questioning on day two of the Rachel Corrie trials, held in Haifa’s District Court earlier this week. “When you write a [protocol] manual, that manual is for war,” he added.

For the human rights activists and friends and family of Rachel Corrie sitting in the courtroom, this open admission of an Israeli policy of indiscrimination towards civilians — Palestinian or foreign — created an audible gasp.

Yet, put into context, this policy comes as no surprise. The Israeli military’s track record of insouciance towards the killings of Palestinians, from the 1948 massacre of Deir Yassin in Jerusalem to the 2008-2009 attacks on Gaza that killed upwards of 1400 men, women and children, has illustrated that not only is this an entrenched operational framework but rarely has it been challenged until recently.

Rachel Corrie, the young American peace activist from Olympia, Washington, was crushed to death by a Caterpillar D9-R bulldozer, as she and other members of the nonviolent International Solidarity Movement attempted to protect a Palestinian home from imminent demolition on March 16, 2003 in Rafah, Gaza Strip. Corrie has since become a symbol of Palestinian solidarity as her family continues to fight for justice in her name.

Her parents, Cindy and Craig Corrie, filed a civil lawsuit against the State of Israel for Rachel’s unlawful killing — what they allege was an intentional act — and this round of testimonies called by the State’s defense team follows the Corries’ witness testimonies last March. The Corries’ lawsuit charges the State with recklessness and a failure to take appropriate measures to protect human life, actions that violate both Israeli and international laws.

Witnesses insisted that the bulldozer driver couldn’t see Rachel Corrie from his perch. The State attorneys called three witnesses to the stand on Sunday and Monday to prove that the killing was unintentional and took place in an area designated as a “closed military zone.”  Falling under the definition of an Act of War, their argument sought to absolve the soldiers of liability under Israeli law.

The Rachel Corrie trials focus on one incident, one moment, one death, one family’s grief. However it’s important to include the context within which the Israeli military operated on that day in March of 2003 in order to properly understand the gravity of the trial and the reverberations seven and a half years later.

Yossi, the military training leader, described the area where Corrie was killed as an “active war zone.” The State’s defense argues the same. Yet what was happening in Rafah that was so important to Corrie that she confronted a 4-meter high armored bulldozer in the first place?

According to statistics from Human Rights Watch, Israel had been expanding its so-called “buffer zone” at the southern Gaza border after the breakout of the second Palestinian intifada in late 2000. “By late 2002,” reports HRW, “after the destruction of several hundred houses in Rafah, the IDF began building an eight meter high metal wall along the border.”

The area that Israel designates as its buffer zone has since enveloped nearly 35% of agricultural land, according to an August 2010 report published by the United Nation’s Office of the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). OCHA says that this policy has affected 113,000 Palestinians inside the Gaza strip over the last ten years as their farms, homes, and villages were intentionally erased from the map.

Rachel Corrie’s nonviolent action — standing in front of the bulldozer in direct confrontation to this project — cost her her life.

The home Rachel Corrie died trying to protect was razed, along with hundreds of others. The Gaza Strip remains a sealed ghetto. And countless Palestinian families have not seen justice waged in their favor after the deaths of their loved ones.

In 2005, an arrest warrant was issued against Major General Doron Almog — a senior soldier in charge of Israel’s Southern Command — by a British court related to the destruction of 59 homes in Rafah in
2002 under his authority. He was warned before boarding a flight to the UK that he could be arrested upon arrival, and canceled his trip.

Related to the Rachel Corrie case, Maj. Almog gave a direct order to the team of internal investigators to cut the investigations short, according to Israeli army documents obtained by Israeli daily Haaretz.

This indicates that the impunity of Israeli soldiers and policy-makers can — and will — be challenged in a court of law. And when the trials continue next month, the Corries will be back in the courtroom in anticipation of a long-sought justice for their daughter.

By Nora Barrows-Friedman, Al Jazeera, September 8, 2010.

But many have refused, preferring to live and work away from the social stigma that often comes with their disease. Al Jazeera’s Ayman Mohyeldin reports from Abu Zaabal, one of the world’s last leprosy colonies.

From Al Jazeera, September 8, 2010.

At least two of the five US soldiers charged in the deaths of three Afghan civilians had kept body parts taken from Afghan corpses and threatened subordinates, according to new documents released by the US army.

Five soldiers – Calvin Gibbs, Adam Winfield, Jeremy Morlock and Michael Wagon, Andrew Holmes – have been charged with premeditated murder. The soldiers are accused of killing three civilians using guns and grenades, in the province of Kandahar earlier this year, even though they faced no immediate threat.

In charging papers released on Wednesday, prosecutors said Gibbs, the most senior of the charged members, was found in possession of “finger bones, leg bones and a tooth taken from Afghan corpses”.

Wagon was found with a skull taken from an Afghan corpse.

Investigators said Morlock and Gibbs, in an attempt to derail the investigation, displayed the finger bones while threatening to kill another man “if he spoke about drug use within the platoon to command and law enforcement authorities,” the document said.

Gibbs is also accused of instructing a soldier to “lie to investigators when questioned about [his] platoon’s involvement in drug use and the unlawful killings of Afghan non-combatants,” the document said.

Investigators said Gibbs also threatened the soldier by saying, “I’m going to send you home by dropping a tow bar on you.” Holmes and Winfield have been charged with wrongful use of hashish.

‘Sabotage’

Prosecutors allege Wagon tried to get rid of evidence in the case by “obtaining a computer hard drive, and asking another soldier to erase incriminating evidence from the hard drive,” his charging paper said.

Gibbs’ laywer has said Gibb denies having taken any part in the alleged conspiracy and that the deaths were all “appropriate engagements”.

Gibbs was deployed to the Forward Operating Base in Ramrod, Afghanistan to find and dispose of fragmentary grenades.

A Joint Base spokeswoman has said charges filed against Morlock involve three separate incidents between January and May; however, it was not clear whether all charged soldiers are accused in all three incidents.

Seven other members of the army unit based at Lewis-McChord have been under investigation for the Afghan civilian deaths, but only the five mentioned above have been charged with premeditated murder.

A military grand jury will consider the charges later this month to decide if there is enough evidence for a military tribunal.

From Al Jazeera and The Guardian, September 9, 2010. Photograph is public domain.

Chen Guangcheng, 39, is a charismatic, inspirational figure for civil liberties lawyers who have fought to enforce the rights enshrined in China’s Constitution but often breached by the authoritarian government and police. Chen was imprisoned in 2006, marking the start of a government crackdown on activist attorneys.

Chen was escorted to his village Thursday morning as family members were preparing to leave to meet him at the Linyi city prison, relative Yin Dongjiang said. The family has been under heavy surveillance in recent days and authorities cut off the mobile and landline phone service for several relatives, he said.

“There’s a lot of people in the village right now and the family isn’t allowed to leave their home,” said Yin, whose sister is married to Chen’s older brother.

Chen’s brother used Yin’s phone, which still worked, to send a message to lawyer Teng Biao saying Chen was at home and that all telephones had been cut. Yin said he had not seen Chen and did not know what his physical condition was after the four-year prison term.

Five men in plain clothes blocked the road into Chen’s village with a van and six more came running after Associated Press journalists who tried to enter the community surrounded by cornfields. After a brief scuffle with the journalists, the men jumped into their van and chased the journalists’ car at high speed as they left the area.

Last week, authorities installed six surveillance cameras in the village to help them keep an eye on Chen, Yin said.

During Chen’s four years and three months in prison, he has only rarely been allowed to see his wife, despite rules that provide for monthly visits. He has suffered from chronic diarrhea and his wife said he has been beaten by fellow inmates.

Blinded by a fever in infancy, Chen attended the Nanjing University of Traditional Chinese Medicine to study acupressure, one of the few occupations available to the blind in China. But he developed an interest in law and eventually began fighting for disabled farmers in his home village, forcing the government to follow the law and waive their tax payments.

He expanded his activism after hearing complaints from people living in nearby villages that family planning officials were forcing women to have late-term abortions and sterilizations to enforce the government’s one-child policy.

Although such practices are illegal, local officials sometimes resort to drastic measures to meet birth limits set by the government — and Beijing usually ignores the abuse. Chen’s careful documentation enraged Linyi officials, who began a harassment campaign.

He was accused of instigating an attack on government offices and organizing a group of people to disrupt traffic, charges his supporters say were fabricated. Police detained three of his lawyers the night before his trial, barred another from examining evidence, while a fifth was beaten by unidentified men.

Human rights lawyer Jiang Tianyong said Chen helped raise awareness among ordinary people of their civil rights. Chen’s prosecution heralded a period of rough tactics used by authorities to curb the determined group of activist lawyers who were taking on sensitive cases, Jiang and other rights experts said.

Jiang said the government has since adopted less heavy-handed ways to rein in the lawyers. “Methods to harass us have become more sophisticated nowadays. Authorities have made it very difficult for legal professionals to properly defend cases,” said Jiang, who was among 53 lawyers — many known for politically sensitive human rights work — who lost their legal licenses in July 2009.

“Now they would not dare to make any of us disappear, or kidnap us, but they will revoke our licenses or conduct trials with many irregularities,” he said.

By Isolda Morillo, Associated Press, September 9, 2010.
Associated Press writer Anita Chang contributed to this story in Beijing.

Five foreign men who say they were kidnapped and tortured by the CIA cannot sue the Boeing Co. subsidiary that helped spirit them away for interrogations because of the risk of secret intelligence matters being exposed at trial, a sharply divided federal appeals court ruled Wednesday.

The decision in the closely watched case was a significant victory for the Obama administration because it recognized a president’s power to protect wartime actions from judicial scrutiny by invoking the state secrets doctrine.

The civil rights lawyer who represented the alleged victims of the Bush administration’s “extraordinary rendition” program said the ruling, if allowed to stand, means the United States has “closed its courtroom doors to torture victims.”

The majority in the 6-5 ruling of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals “reluctantly” concluded that national security interests in the case were paramount to “even the most compelling necessity” to protect fundamental principles of liberty and justice.

The lawsuit brought by former Guantanamo Bay prisoner Binyam Mohamed and four others sought to hold San Jose’s Jeppesen DataPlan Inc. responsible for the alleged violations committed against them because of the company’s logistical support to the CIA. Jeppesen reportedly supplied the flight services and other assistance to CIA agents who whisked the men from Sweden, Pakistan, Jordan and Gambia to secret interrogation sites elsewhere overseas.

In exacting detail, the majority reiterated the men’s accounts of having been snatched off the streets in their resident countries or on business trips abroad, then blindfolded, shackled, stripped and transported to CIA “black sites.” They said they were beaten, starved, subjected to electrical shocks to the genitals and held in darkness and isolation for months at a time.

“This case requires us to address the difficult balance the state secrets doctrine strikes between fundamental principles of our liberty, including justice, transparency, accountability and national security,” began the majority opinion written by Judge Raymond C. Fisher, appointed to the San Francisco-based appeals court by President Clinton. “Although as judges we strive to honor all of these principles, there are times when exceptional circumstances create an irreconcilable conflict between them.”

The majority said the case couldn’t go forward even on the basis of unclassified evidence already disclosed to the public because those facts were part of a “mosaic” and the court cannot order the government to “disentangle” innocuous information from what is secret.

“Litigating the case to a judgment on the merits would present an unacceptable risk of disclosing state secrets,” the majority said.

A federal district court judge in San Francisco in 2008 granted the U.S. government’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit after President George W. Bush asserted his state secrets privilege, arguing that litigation of the case would reveal confidential national security practices and interrogation tactics.

A three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit last year reversed the district court, saying the men should be allowed to prove their case on the unclassified evidence they claimed would be sufficient for a trial court to reach a judgment on their behalf.

The five judges who dissented in the ruling deemed arbitrary imprisonment and torture “a gross and notorious act of despotism.” They called the majority decision to dismiss the lawsuit “premature.”

“This court should not determine that there is no feasible way to litigate Jeppesen’s liability without disclosing state secrets; such a determination is the district court’s to make,” read the dissent written by Senior Judge Michael Daly Hawkins, another Clinton appointee.

A Justice Department spokesman welcomed the appeals court action dismissing the men’s suit.

“The Attorney General adopted a new policy last year to ensure the state secrets privilege is only used in cases where it is essential to protect national security, and we are pleased that the court recognized that the policy was used appropriately in this case,” said Matthew Miller, director of public affairs.

An attorney for the plaintiffs disagreed.

“To date, not a single victim of the Bush administration torture programs has had a day in court,” said Ben Wizner, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union representing Mohamed and the other four men.

Obama as a candidate vowed to rein in use of the state secrets privilege but has backed the Bush administration policy in several high-profile cases, including the rendition challenge. He also promised to abolish torture in handling terrorism cases.

In the 55-page opinion, replete with ambivalence, the six judges voting for dismissal pointed out that the plaintiffs could still pursue compensation or redress from the U.S. government or Congress. They alluded to the Japanese Americans interned during World War II who were later paid reparations for the violation of their civil rights.

“We do not reach our decision lightly or without close and skeptical scrutiny of the record and the government’s case for secrecy and dismissal,” said the majority.

Fisher noted in his opinion that the appeals court had had the opportunity to question the government attorneys behind closed doors after the hearing in December, and that the majority concluded after reviewing both public and classified declarations “that the government is not invoking the privilege to avoid embarrassment or to escape scrutiny of its recent controversial transfer and interrogation policies.”

Bobby Chesney, a national security law professor at the University of Texas, said the majority ruling was riddled with “overtones that suggest awareness of the human costs” of those subjected to government actions that have stirred serious concerns about human rights violations.

In another indication of conflicting sentiments in the decision, the court ordered the U.S. government to pay all parties’ costs.

“Maybe that’s their way of doing rough justice,” Allen Weiner, a Stanford University national security law professor, said of the unusual award of attorney fees to a losing party. “They may be saying the government gets its way, but we don’t have to pile on and make the [plaintiffs] pay for losing.”

By Carol J. Williams, Los Angeles Times, September 9, 2010.

Witnesses say that four armed and hooded men stepped out of a white truck at city hall, the San Luis Potosi government said in a statement.
Two of the men posted themselves outside, and two went inside and to the top floor of the building, where they entered the mayor’s office and shot him, the statement said.

The attack happened in broad daylight, at about 1:30 p.m. (2:30 p.m. ET), and was brazen even by the standards of Mexico’s violent drug cartel wars.

At least seven mayors in various Mexican states have been assassinated in 2010.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon condemned the “criminal and cowardly” killing of the mayor.

“The federal government reiterates that it will continue working for the security of the citizens, with all the available resources of the state,” Calderon said.

Alexander Lopez Garcia, 35, assumed office in October 2009 as a candidate for an alliance between the Revolutionary Institutional Party (PRI), and the Ecologist Green Party.

From CNN, September 8, 2010 and El Semanario, September 9, 2010. Photo from El Semanario.

CNN’s Mariano Castillo and Nick Valencia contributed to this report.

Mushi, 32, has been working with giant African pouched rats for almost seven years. He now enjoys their company — “They’re just like my friend,” he says — but he concedes he was skeptical when the man who conceived the idea for HeroRats first told him they could sniff out live ordnance.

“I thought maybe he was making some jokes,” Mushi said. “I was amazed that rats could do such a thing.”

Before he started working with rats, Mushi had a comfortable job teaching the Kiswahili language at a Lutheran seminary. He was terrified when he first took one of his long-tailed protégés into a Mozambican minefield.

He’d heard stories of accidents involving the mines, mostly leftovers from Mozambique’s civil war, which ended in 1992. He was not emboldened by the skeletons of soldiers and others who’d taken unfortunate steps before him.

But his rat found 16 land mines that day.

“We are not a good friend to these creatures,” Mushi said of his countrymen, “but after people see this work that we are doing, they change this position.”

Bart Weetjens is the brain and Buddhist monk behind APOPO (a Dutch acronym meaning Anti-Personnel Land Mines Detection Product Development), which trains HeroRats. He said Mushi’s initial repulsion is common.

Prejudice against rats is “deep in our psyche” and has roots in the Middle Ages when the rodents were blamed for the plague, Weetjens said. He quickly cited Black Death’s rightful culprit: fleas.

The Belgian-born Weetjens, 43, is an apt candidate to change rats’ unsavory image. A self-professed rodent lover, he was given his first hamster, Goldy, for his ninth birthday.

“Fascinated as I was by it, I wanted to have a female hamster. Soon, I had a nest of hamsters,” he said. “Mother didn’t like that too much, so I took them to the pet shop and they gave me money for those hamsters.”

He soon found out pet shops paid even more for rats, and more still for gerbils and squirrels. It wasn’t long before Weetjens had a “kind of breeding arrangement in my room” and was selling various rodents for walking-around money.

At 14, he gave up his enterprise when he was sent to boarding school, but he maintained his love for rodents.

Several of Weetjens’ family members had worked in Africa, and Weetjens harbored a commitment to the continent. In the spring of 1995, he was analyzing the world’s land mine epidemic — a cause made vogue at the time by Britain’s Princess Diana — when he came across research that spoke to his childhood proclivity.

Scientists were studying the use of gerbils in land mine detection, but they were using a system involving brain electrodes that Weetjens found unsustainable. He wanted a locally based solution that might empower communities.

“Yes, rats can do that,” he thought. “I knew I was right, even if it was very hard to defend.”

It’s difficult to quantify the scourge of land mines in Africa. Experts are reluctant to give statistics, but it’s safe to say there are single countries hosting millions of them.

The International Campaign to Ban Landmines says land mines and related devices were responsible for 73,576 casualties worldwide from 1999 to 2009. Campaign data from 2007 say there were 5,426 recorded casualties, with almost a fifth of them in 24 African countries.

Death and injury, however, are only two ramifications of the buried terrors, said land mine expert Havard Bach, formerly of the Geneva International Center for Humanitarian Demining.
Unexploded ordnance renders roads, highways and enormous swaths of land useless, Bach said. Fear lingers for years after a single accident, holding back growth, movement, development and opportunities for commerce and aid.

“One mine in an area is enough to prevent an entire population from making use of it,” he said.
In a land where resources are scarce, Weetjens felt rats were suited to the task — but he had to get past people laughing at his plan. Bach said he kept an open mind.

“I just thought it was a strange idea,” Bach said. “You come across a lot of silly ideas that never result in anything when you work in this industry.”

2009 By The Numbers:

1.3 million — Square meters of Mozambican minefield returned to population

44,547 — Estimated beneficiaries of APOPO’s mine clearance activities

3,871 — Small arms and ammo neutralized

350 — Mines and other ordnance neutralized

23,624 — Number of samples tested for tuberculosis

561 — Cases of TB detected

8,415 — Estimated number of TB transmissions prevented

123 — Staff employed

109 — Rats bred

60 — Rats accredited for mine detection

1.18 — Dollars it cost to clear a square meter of minefield

Source: APOPO’s annual report

Upon study, the rats’ advantages emerged.

Their olfactory senses are superb. They’re native to Africa, so tropical disease is no problem, and they rarely weigh more than the 3 to 10 kilograms required to trip a mine, Bach said. It also helps that the mine-sniffing rats are not bonded to individual trainers or prone to ennui, as dogs are, he said.

“If you compare them to canine mine detectors, it’s pretty much the same in terms of sensitivity and capability,” Bach said, noting that dogs are better equipped to work in brush or high grass that might conceal a rat.

“Rats are not going to oust dogs in this industry, but it’s a very positive complement,” he added. “You could say they work for peanuts.”

Indeed, said Weetjens, cost is especially an advantage in Africa. It takes limited skill and only six to eight months to train a rat — or a year for the “slow” rats because “some rats are smarter than others,” said trainer Mushi, who oversees 14 rats.

The cost to train a rat is 6,000 euros ($7,700), roughly a third of what it costs to train a dog. Where dogs need expansive kennel facilities and regular veterinary care because of African climates, APOPO’s kennel facilities at Sokoine University of Agriculture in Morogoro, Tanzania, can house up to 300 rats. The rats see a single vet once a week and are much easier to transport than dogs, Weetjens said.

Training begins with socialization when the rats are 4 weeks old because “it’s really important they learn man are friends,” Weetjens said.

A system of Pavlovian conditioning follows. Trainers teach the rodents to associate a clicking noise with something tasty: a banana or peanuts. The same treats are used to teach them how to signal when they find a mine and how to detect the scent of TNT in tea balls.

The final phase before they’re shipped to Mozambique for accreditation includes several trial runs in APOPO’s training minefields, some of which contain tea balls, others live mines.

Nailing down the regimen was tricky. At one point in APOPO’s early days, the rats performed perfectly in trials, making Weetjens suspicious. It turned out the rats were outsmarting the humans.

“They knew which samples had been touched by the trainers,” he said. “We have to remain extremely vigilant not to bring in additional cues that help the animal find out what the rewarding samples are.”

It hasn’t been easy convincing the international community that mine-sniffing rats are viable, but donors are coming around. A partners list once consisting solely of Antwerp University and the Belgian government now includes about 30 groups, including the U.N. Development Program, World Bank Development Marketplace and the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship.

APOPO also enjoys sponsorship from individuals through its Adopt-A-Rat program.

In June, Bach left his position of 11 years at the Geneva International Center for Humanitarian Demining, another partner, to become APOPO’s chief of mine action and human security. He said it’s “rewarding to work for a small firm with great potential.”

In 2008 and 2009, about 30 state-accredited HeroRats, their noses atwitter, scampered across more than a million square meters of Mozambican land, ferreting out almost 400 mines and other ordnance. The U.N. says 9.6 million square meters still needed to be cleared in 2009.

Bach said APOPO is considering taking its rats to other war-torn nations, such as Angola and eastern Congo. Also, HeroRats’ sniffers are being employed to detect tuberculosis, and APOPO is working to apply its techniques to pinpoint gas leaks, narcotics, tainted food and people trapped in rubble.

Though APOPO says its methods are being refined and the time it takes to train the rats is diminishing, Mushi said even after seven years he remains anxious walking into minefields.

“When people tell you that mine is live, you are very scared,” he said, but he welcomes the fright. “Fear keeps you very, very careful, makes you cautious in every step that you make.”

Learn more about adopting rats

By Eliott C. McLaughlin, CNN, September 8, 2010. Video from APOPO and News Agencies.

There were many odd things about my recent Havana stopover (apart from the dolphin show, which I’ll get to shortly), but one of the most unusual was Fidel Castro’s level of self-reflection. I only have limited experience with Communist autocrats (I have more experience with non-Communist autocrats) but it seemed truly striking that Castro was willing to admit that he misplayed his hand at a crucial moment in the Cuban Missile Crisis (you can read about what he said toward the end of my previous post - but he said, in so many words, that he regrets asking Khruschev to nuke the U.S.).

Even more striking was something he said at lunch on the day of our first meeting. We were seated around a smallish table; Castro, his wife, Dalia, his son; Antonio; Randy Alonso, a major figure in the government-run media; and Julia Sweig, the friend I brought with me to make sure, among other things, that I didn’t say anything too stupid (Julia is a leading Latin American scholar at the Council on Foreign Relations). I initially was mainly interested in watching Fidel eat – it was a combination of digestive problems that conspired to nearly kill him, and so I thought I would do a bit of gastrointestinal Kremlinology and keep a careful eye on what he took in (for the record, he ingested small amounts of fish and salad, and quite a bit of bread dipped in olive oil, as well as a glass of red wine). But during the generally lighthearted conversation (we had just spent three hours talking about Iran and the Middle East), I asked him if he believed the Cuban model was still something worth exporting.

“The Cuban model doesn’t even work for us anymore,” he said.

This struck me as the mother of all Emily Litella moments. Did the leader of the Revolution just say, in essence, “Never mind”?

I asked Julia to interpret this stunning statement for me. She said, “He wasn’t rejecting the ideas of the Revolution. I took it to be an acknowledgment that under ‘the Cuban model’ the state has much too big a role in the economic life of the country.”

Julia pointed out that one effect of such a sentiment might be to create space for his brother, Raul, who is now president, to enact the necessary reforms in the face of what will surely be push-back from orthodox communists within the Party and the bureaucracy. Raul Castro is already loosening the state’s hold on the economy. He recently announced, in fact, that small businesses can now operate and that foreign investors could now buy Cuban real estate.

(The joke of this new announcement, of course, is that Americans are not allowed to invest in Cuba, not because of Cuban policy, but because of American policy. In other words, Cuba is beginning to adopt the sort of economic ideas that America has long-demanded it adopt, but Americans are not allowed to participate in this free-market experiment because of our government’s hypocritical and stupidly self-defeating embargo policy. We’ll regret this, of course, when Cubans partner with Europeans and Brazilians to buy up all the best hotels).

But I digress. Toward the end of this long, relaxed lunch, Fidel proved to us that he was truly semi-retired. The next day was Monday, when maximum leaders are expected to be busy single-handedly managing their economies, throwing dissidents into prison, and the like. But Fidel’s calendar was open.

He asked us, “Would you like to go the aquarium with me to see the dolphin show?”

I wasn’t sure I heard him correctly. (This happened a number of times during my visit). “The dolphin show?”

“The dolphins are very intelligent animals,” Castro said.

I noted that we had a meeting scheduled for the next morning, with Adela Dworin, the president of Cuba’s Jewish community.

“Bring her,” Fidel said.

Someone at the table mentioned that the aquarium was closed on Mondays. Fidel said, “It will be open tomorrow.”

And so it was.

Late the next morning, after collecting Adela at the synagogue, we met Fidel on the steps of the dolphin house. He kissed Dworin, not incidentally in front of the cameras (another message for Ahmadinejad, perhaps).

We went together into a large, blue-lit room that faces a massive, glass-enclosed dolphin tank. Fidel explained, at length, that the Havana Aquarium’s dolphin show was the best dolphin show in the world, “completely unique,” in fact, because it is an underwater show. Three human divers enter the water, without breathing equipment, and perform intricate acrobatics with the dolphins. “Do you like dolphins?” Fidel asked me.

“I like dolphins a lot,” I said.

Fidel called over Guillermo Garcia, the director of the aquarium (every employee of the aquarium, of course, showed up for work — “voluntarily,” I was told) and told him to sit with us.

“Goldberg,” Fidel said, “ask him questions about dolphins.”

“What kind of questions?” I asked.

“You’re a journalist, ask good questions,” he said, and then interrupted himself. “He doesn’t know much about dolphins anyway,” he said, pointing to Garcia. He’s actually a nuclear physicist.”

“You are?” I asked.

“Yes,” Garcia said, somewhat apologetically.

“Why are you running the aquarium?” I asked.

“We put him here to keep him from building nuclear bombs!” Fidel said, and then cracked-up laughing.

“In Cuba, we would only use nuclear power for peaceful means,” Garcia said, earnestly.

“I didn’t think I was in Iran,” I answered.

Fidel pointed to the small rug under the special swivel chair his bodyguards bring along for him.

“It’s Persian!” he said, and laughed again. Then he said, “Goldberg, ask your questions about dolphins.”

Now on the spot, I turned to Garcia and asked, “How much do the dolphins weigh?”

They weigh between 100 and 150 kilograms, he said.

“How do you train the dolphins to do what they do?” I asked.

“That’s a good question,” Fidel said.

Garcia called over one of the aquarium’s veterinarians to help answer the question. Her name was Celia. A few minutes later, Antonio Castro told me her last name: Guevara.

“You’re Che’s daughter?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said.

“And you’re a dolphin veterinarian?”

“I take care of all the inhabitants of the aquarium,” she said.

“Che liked animals very much,” Antonio Castro said.

It was time for the show to start. The lights dimmed, and the divers entered the water. Without describing it overly much, I will say that once again, and to my surprise, I found myself agreeing with Fidel: The aquarium in Havana puts on a fantastic dolphin show, the best I’ve ever seen, and as the father of three children, I’ve seen a lot of dolphin shows. I will also say this: I’ve never seen someone enjoy a dolphin show as much as Fidel Castro enjoyed the dolphin show.

In the next installment, I will deal with such issues as the American embargo, the status of religion in Cuba, the plight of political dissidents, and economic reform. For now, I leave you with this image from our day at the aquarium (I’m in the low chair; Che’s daughter is behind me, with the short, blondish hair; Fidel is the guy who looks like Fidel if Fidel shopped at L.L. Bean):

By Jeffrey Goldberg, The Atlantic, September 8, 2010.

Jeffrey Goldberg is a national correspondent for The Atlantic. Author of the book Prisoners: A Story of Friendship and Terror, he has reported from the Middle East and Africa. He also writes the magazine’s advice column.

The tablet, costing as little as 10p a day and made up of three vitamin B supplements, cut brain shrinkage linked to memory loss by up to 500 per cent.

Oxford University researchers behind the landmark study said it offered the ‘first glimmer of hope’ in the battle to find a drug that slows or stops the development of Alzheimer’s.

It and other forms of dementia blight the lives of more than 800,000 Britons, and the number of cases is expected to double within a generation.

No previous drug trials have been successful and, with around 500 new cases of Alzheimer’s diagnosed every day in the UK alone, anything that delays the development of the disease could improve the lives of millions.

The breakthrough centres on a compound called homocysteine which is naturally made in the body and, at high levels, has been linked to memory loss and Alzheimer’s.

Vitamin B is known to break down homocysteine, so the researchers decided to look at whether giving patients the vitamin would be good for memory.

Working with colleagues in Norway, the Oxford team recruited 270 pensioners suffering from slight memory lapses that can be a precursor to Alzheimer’s.

Known as mild cognitive impairment, or MCI, it affects one in six aged 70-plus, or 1.5million Britons.

Half of those with MCI will develop dementia within five years of diagnosis. Half of those taking part in the trial took a vitamin B tablet a day for two years.

The tablets contained extremely high doses of vitamins B6, 9 and 12.

For instance, the amount of B12 was up to 300 times higher than could be obtained by simply eating bananas, meat, wholegrains, beans and other foods rich in the vitamin.

The others took a daily dummy pill with no active ingredients.

Brain scans were carried out to check if the pill reduced the shrinkage of the brain that happens naturally as we age and speeds up in memory loss.

Vitamin B cut the amount of shrinkage by 30 per cent, on average, the journal PLoS ONE reports.

In those with the highest amounts of homocysteine in their bloodstream at the start of the study, it halved the shrinkage and in one extreme case, it cut it five-fold.

Those with the slowest rate of shrinkage did best in memory tests and in some cases their ability to recall lists was as good at the end of the trial as it was at the start.

Professor David Smith, one of the study leaders, said: ‘This is a very striking, dramatic result. It is our hope this simple and safe treatment will delay the development of Alzheimer’s in many who suffer from mild memory problems.’

Co-researcher Professor Helga Refsum added: ‘Here we have a very simple solution: you give some vitamins and you seem to protect the brain.’

The results suggest that a basic cocktail of vitamins can achieve results that have evaded pharmaceutical companies, despite billions of pounds being spent on experimental dementia drugs.

Professor Smith said: ‘This was a disease-modifying study. All other disease modifying trials have failed. What we can say is that this is the first one that shows a glimmer of hope and success.’

The professor plans to run a larger trial which will look at whether the vitamin cocktail actually affects the onset of Alzheimer’s.

If the trial is successful, high dose vitamin B could be widely prescribed to those with mild memory loss in as little as five years.

Those who do not want to wait can make their own vitamin cocktail with supplements on sale at health food stores.

But the researchers stress that people should not do this without speaking to their doctor first.

High dose vitamins may trigger cancer and are known to fuel existing cancers. They may also react with medicines including arthritis and psoriasis drugs.

Despite this, Professor Smith says he ‘would not hesitate’ to take the cocktail of 20mg of vitamin B6, 0.8mg of vitamin B9, or folate, and 0.5mg of vitamin B12, himself, if he were diagnosed with MCI.

The Alzheimer’s Research Trust, which part-funded the study, said that delaying the onset of Alzheimer’s by five years could halve the number of those who die with the condition.

Rebecca Wood, the charity’s chief executive, said: ‘These are very important results.’

The Alzheimer’s Society gave the research a cautious welcome. Professor Clive Ballard said: ‘This could change the lives of thousands of people at risk of dementia. However, previous studies looking at B vitamins have been very disappointing and we wouldn’t want to raise people’s expectations yet.’

● A drug that may combat the sticky deposits that clog up the brains of Alzheimer’s patients has been created by U.S. scientists. In tests on mice it cut levels of a compound key to plaque formation, without any side-effects, the journal Neuron reports.

By Fiona Macrae, Daily Mail, September 8, 2010.

And now Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie have spent $40 million on their third home – a mansion in Italy.

Situated in the Northern Italian hills of Valpolicella, the property boasts 18,000 square feet and 15 bedrooms, seven baths, a movie theater, two swimming pools, a gym and several Jacuzzis.

The property also has stables and a vineyard.

Angelina apparently fell in love with Italy after filming The Tourist there earlier this year.

She and Brad intend to use the Italian property as a vacation home and continue to use their Loz Feliz house as their main base.

The Los Feliz house is nothing to sneeze at, either.

Brad bought the 5,338 sq ft house for $1.7 million in 1994, and has invested millions into renovating and expanding it.

Sitting on nearly an acre of land, the property consists of a five-bedroom, 5,338-square-foot main Craftsman-style house.

There is also an adjoining 2,454-square-foot house on a 0.29-acre lot, plus another 0.03-acre strip of vacant land that he also continues to own, plus another adjoining 1,653-square-foot house.

Their property in New Orleans is also stunning.

Brad and Angelina bought the early-1830s mansion which is situated in the French Quarter of New Orleans in 2007.

Brad was in New Orleans at the time filming The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

The house was purchased for $3.5 million in cash, and boasts a grand spiral staircase, elevator, and gourmet kitchen.

It also has a large private courtyad and a separate two-story guest house, as well as private parking for two cars.

Brad and Angelina got together in 2005 – shortly after Pitt’s four-year marriage to Jennifer Aniston failed.

The couple have six children: adopted sons Maddox, nine, and Pax, six; adopted daughter Zahara, five; and their natural children Shiloh, four, and twins Knox and Vivienne, two.

Brad has recently spent time in New Orleans observing the fifth
anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.

He toured the Lower 9th Ward, one of the worst hit areas.

He also took a look around some of the new affordable, eco houses that have been built as part of his Make It Right Foundation, which he set up to help residents who lost their homes in the disaster.

He founded the project in 2007 and so far 50 homes have been built with aims to build up to 150.

Angelina also paid a brief one-day visit to New Orleans for the anniversary.

She recently flew to Pakistan to raise awareness for the victims of the devastating floods that happened last month.

The 35-year-old United Nations goodwill ambassador visited the Kandaro II Camp in Nowshera, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

And even with headscarf on, there was no mistaking her Hollywood style.

More than 1,500 Pakistanis have been killed and around 20million affected by flooding brought on by the annual monsoon rains last month.

‘I am very moved by them and I hope that I am able to do something to help bring attention to the situation for all of the people in need in Pakistan,’ Miss Jolie said.

‘This is not just a humanitarian crisis, it is an economic and social catastrophe’.

From The Daily Mail, September 8, 2010.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

“I represent Seattle police, you can’t arrest me,” Bremner told one of the officers who assisted with the investigation. “You can’t arrest me. I represent Seattle and King County, you are making a mistake.”

On Tuesday, the King County Sheriff’s Office released police documents detailing Bremner’s arrest and the investigation into the case.

Just before she was taken to the King County Jail, she said: “I’m a lawyer. I represent you guys come on take me home,” according to one of the officers’ report.

After originally arguing that she’d been mistakenly arrested for drunken driving when in fact she was suffering from a head injury, Bremner, 52, changed her story last week and pleaded guilty in King County District Court to one count of drunken driving. She apologized for what she called a mistake and pledged never again to get behind the wheel after consuming alcohol, even if only after one drink.

During her court appearance, her lawyer said Bremner, who often represents Seattle police officers accused of misconduct, apologized to the officers involved in the incident and for her actions. The attorney said his client “anxious to put this incident behind her and get back to the business of helping other people.”

In June, seattlepi.com and other media outlets requested her arrest report from the Sheriff’s Office under open records laws. Bremner fought those requests, filing lawsuits — including one under a “Jane Doe” — moniker and then pursued an appeal after a King County Superior Court judge ordered that most be released.

Police report: http://www.seattlepi.com/dayart/PDF/Bremner.pdf

Tuesday’s release of the official records followed a twist last Friday in which Bremner had copies of the report edited and delivered to seattlepi.com and other media outlets. Several portions, including her remarks to the officers, were blacked out.

Tyler Firkins, Bremner’s attorney in the civil proceedings regarding the seattlepi.com’s records request, initially said Bremner had sustained a head injury in a hit-and-run collision on the night of her arrest and as a result she suffered symptoms making her appear intoxicated. He argued that releasing the report would damage Bremner’s reputation and would violate her right to privacy.

In reports released Tuesday, a King County sheriff’s detective contradicts the findings of a defense investigator used to bolster Bremner’s previous claim, since abandoned, that she was the victim of a hit-and-run crash.

The sheriff’s detective concluded that damage to the tires and undercarriage of Bremner’s BMW were “consistent with a raised curb impact.” Dents to the right side and rear of the car could, the detective continued, were likely caused by the car striking stationary objects at low speed.

During last week’s court hearing, Bremner criminal attorney Bill Bowman blamed the incident on a combination of alcohol and medication she takes for bipolar disorder. Bremner has lived with the condition her entire life, Bowman said, and it has never been a problem in her legal career.

Bremner, a partner at Stafford Frey Cooper, frequently appears as a legal analyst on several television networks. She has been one of the most vocal advocates for Amanda Knox, the University of Washington student convicted of killing her roommate in Perugia, Italy. Knox’s attorneys have appealed her conviction.

Deputy spotted car with flat

According to the copy of arresting officer Deputy Brandon Moen’s report, Bremner was stopped shortly after midnight on June 4 after the officer saw her BMW driving on a flat tire at slow speeds in the 8300 block of Northeast Bothell Way in Kenmore. The deputy noted that her eyes were watery and bloodshot, she slurred when she spoke and that he could smell the “overwhelmingly strong odor of intoxicants on her breath.”

She told the officer she was coming from a dinner party but could “provide no information on how the tire got flat,” according to the report. According to statements filed with the court, the party was attended by lawyers and judges.

The deputy asked if she knew where she was and she “just stared blankly.” When he asked a second time, she replied: “I’m not going to play games,” according to the report.

When he asked how much she had had to drink, she said “not much,” and that she just had wine with dinner. She told the deputy she called 911 for help with her tires but was ignored, according to the report. (Listen to 911 calls: Part 1 / Part 2)

In an e-mail to friends on August 6, which was obtained by the Sheriff’s Office during the investigation, Bremner said she was driving home when she was sideswiped by another car, causing her to suffer a concussion. She said that after regaining consciousness, she called 911 and tried to move her car off the road to a service station. She said the deputy arrived an hour after the collision and did not try to ascertain whether she was injured. Instead, she said, the deputy arrested her on suspicion of DUI after a “two-minute” interview.

“If charges are brought I am confident I will be cleared of these erroneous charges once all the evidence has been presented; I fear, however, that my professional reputation may be tarnished in the short term,” the e-mail said.

The records provided Tuesday include two 911 calls to Seattle police from Bremner about her flat tire. In the calls, she is unable to tell the dispatcher what street she is on. In one call, what sounds like her tire slapping the road can be heard.

Through GPS, the 911 calls were traced to an area near Fairview Avenue East and Lakeview Bouelvard along Lake Union. About 40 minutes later, a citizen called 911 to report seeing a car driving on a flat tire on Lake City Way Northeast at Northeast 145th Street, according to an officer’s report. Fifteen minutes later, Bremner was stopped about three miles away.

In a July 29 declaration made to the court under penalty of perjury, Dr. Philip G. Lindsay stated that “(Bremner) had been the victim of a hit and run driver at 50 mph and had suffered a concussion,” Lindsay said. “She called 9-1-1 twice. However, they did not respond.”

Nowhere in either recording does Bremner report a hit-and-run crash or request medical assistance. Instead, the dispatcher provided her during both calls with the number for the American Automobile Association, a roadside assistance service.

In court last month, Senior Deputy Prosecutor John Cobb said Lindsay was misleading when he noted that Bremner twice called the police but received no help.

After the deputy arrested Bremner, she was handcuffed and placed into his patrol car. When she was taken to the police station, Bremner at first said she couldn’t decide whether she wanted to take the Breathalyzer test. She then said she would make the decision on “her time,” according to the deputy’s report.

“I instructed Bremner how to provide breath samples,” the deputy stated. “However, Bremner blew into the tube for only a few seconds and then stopped.”

He said he told her again that she would need to blow for about 10 to 15 seconds. She again blew into the tube, but “not even coming close to satisfying the machine’s duration requirement.”

The deputy reported she appeared to be trying to stall the process, and during another attempt at administering the test, the deputy heard a “sucking-type sound,” like she was sucking on the tube or sticking her tongue into the mouthpiece, according to his report.

“It was clear at this point that after multiple attempts to get Bremner to provide breath samples, that she was not putting forth effort and was therefore effectively refusing the test,” according to the deputy’s report.

The deputy reported that Bremner called him a Nazi and the “creepiest officer” she’d ever met. She also threatened “I will sue your ass” and “it’ll be bad for you guys,” according to the report.

In her statement issued last week, Bremner said: “Please note that the video system at the Sheriff’s Office does not have audio nor was the deputy’s patrol vehicle equipped with video or audio recording equipment.”

In Bremner’s car, the deputy found an e-mail invitation to a dinner party at the home of Rosselle Pekelis, a former state Supreme Court justice and former King County Superior Court judge. The deputy noted the e-mail could be potentially relevant to his investigation due to comments it contained.

In the e-mail, the judge wrote that she expected to be eating indoors due to the rainy weather and “I have wine too although I doubt there will be a shortage…Egads, time to drink or drown!”

Bremner’s defense investigator interviewed Pekelis, who said it was not a drinking party and that the same group meets every two months or so. Pekelis, her husband, and others reported no issues with Bremner regarding her balance, coordination or thought process and speech, before she left, according to summaries of their statements.

After entering a guilty plea, Bremner was sentenced to two days in jail. She is also required to attend a DUI victim impact panel and an alcohol abuse course.

By Levi Pulkkinen and Scott Gutierrez, seattlepi.com, September 7, 2010. Seattlepi.com is a media partner of KOMO News.

A Russian Rokot carrier rocket blasted off from the Plesetsk space center in northern Russia early on Wednesday to put a Gonets-M and two Kosmos satellites into orbit, a Defense Ministry spokesman said.

The launch took place on schedule at 07:30am Moscow time (03:30 GMT), Lt. Col. Alexei Zolotukhin said, adding that the satellites are expected to separate from the carrier rocket at 09:14am Moscow time (05:14 GMT).

The Kosmos satellites will be used to provide communication for military purposes. The Gonets-M satellite will be part of Russia’s large-scale Glonass satellite navigation system.

Glonass — the Global Navigation Satellite System — is the Russian equivalent of the U.S. Global Positioning System, or GPS, and is designed for both military and civilian use. Both systems enable users to determine their positions to within a few meters.

Russia currently has a total of 26 Glonass satellites in orbit, but two of them are not functional. The system requires 18 operational satellites for continuous navigation services covering the entire territory of Russia and at least 24 satellites to provide navigation services worldwide.

By mid-October, a total of 23 satellites are expected to be operational.

From RIA Novosti, September 8, 2010. Photos from European Space Agency and RIA.

Some 1,340 plastic containers full of caviar were seized in the town of Sobolevo, the official said.

A total of 207 poaching-related offences and crimes have been registered in Russia since the start of the year.

In line with Russian law, all contraband caviar must be destroyed. The law was introduced in 2008, eliminating a loophole that permitted the sale of confiscated roe.

From RIA Novosti, September 8, 2010.
Photo by Sergei Krasnoukhov, RIA.

Authorities in more than a dozen European nations have launched a crackdown on an online file-sharing network.

Swedish officials said that raids had been undertaken in 14 countries on Tuesday in a major operation that followed two years of investigations by Belgian police.

The majority of the police action occurred in Sweden, according to TorrentFreak, a file-sharing news website.

A network named The Scene was a key target, according to a statement from Swedish prosecutors.

The Scene was said to have offered films before they were available on DVD.

Paul Pinter, a Swedish police officer from the minor crimes unit, said that police targetted 48 sites across Europe that were part of the network.

Police raided seven locations in Sweden, including one in a suburb of Stockholm, containing servers used by file-sharing website The Pirate Bay and Wikileaks, the whisteblowing website.

However, that service provider said that officers had visited them but only asked questions over two suspect IP addresses, and that no computers or other goods had been seized.

Frederick Ingblad, a Swedish Prosecutor, confirmed to local media that Wikileaks was not involved in the current action.

Locations in Malmo, Umea University and Eskilstuna were also raided in Sweden.

Reports state that four people are reportedly being questioned on alleged breach of copyright law, with servers and computers having been taken by authorities.

Raids were also said to have been carried out in the Netherlands, Norway, Germany, the UK, the Czech Republic and Hungary.

From Al Jazeera and Agencies, September 7, 2010. Photo from EPA.

Afghanistan has frozen the assets of leading shareholders and borrowers at Kabul Bank, the country’s leading private bank, in the wake of the crisis sparked by the resignation of two high-level directors.

Aimal Hashoor, the central bank’s spokesman, said on Tuesday the Central Bank had ordered the assets of Sher Khan Farnood, Kabul Bank’s former chairman, and Khalilullah Fruzi, the chief executive officer, to be frozen, together with those of several other shareholders and major borrowers.

“This basically stops the sale of their assets until the situation becomes clear,” Hashoor said.

Last week, US media reported that the central bank had taken control of Kabul Bank, forcing Farnood and Fruzi to resign and ordering the former to hand over $160 million worth of luxury villas purchased with bank funds in Dubai.

However, the Afghan government and the central bank governor have both rejected the allegations, denying that the central bank had stepped in and saying Farnood and Fruzi had stepped aside in line with new financial regulations.

Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, and Omar Zakhilwal, the country’s finance minister, both said Farnood and Fruzi stepped down because of new banking rules forbidding shareholders from holding senior management positions at the bank.

Karzai connection

One of Karzai’s brothers and the brother of one of his two vice-presidents are major shareholders at Kabul Bank, whose customers include about 250,000 state employees.

An official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Mahmoud Karzai, the president’s brother, was not subject to the central bank’s asset freeze because he does not have property registered in his name.

However, he said Mohammad Haseen, the brother of Mohammad Qasim Fahim, the first vice-president, was among them.

Corruption is one of the most common complaints from ordinary Afghans and Washington fears widespread corruption is boosting the Taliban-led armed campaign and complicating efforts to strengthen central government control so that US and other foreign troops can begin withdrawing.

Long queues of jittery customers have formed at the bank’s branches since it became known last week that the two directors, who each own a 28 per cent stake in Kabul Bank, had quit.

From Al Jazeera and Agencies, September 7, 2010.

Photo from Al Jazeera.

This time Qais spent a day with a large group who have taken control of part of Baghlan province up in the north of the country. He met a minder at a prearranged place and was guided safely into their village where they’d gathered to attend the mosque and listen to a famous Taliban singer. More on this Afghan musician in our next exclusive report with the Taliban later this week.

Qais was nervous. He couldn’t stop thinking that this gathering was just the sort of target the international forces seeks out from the air. During the filming his ears were permanently strained listening for the sound of an aircraft, helicopter or drone overhead.

But these fighters showed no fear. They seemed oblivious to the possible dangers of an air strike.

Some covered their faces from the camera. These men still want to come and go within Afghan society and not be recognised. Others clamoured to be on camera. Displaying their weapons proudly they talked of how they believed, once the foreign forces left the country, they would remove President Karzai’s government within 24 hours.

Their morale was very high. American talk of withdrawal has boosted their belief that the battle is won.

Filming over, Qais headed back to the highway, hugely relieved that the visit was over. But today he’s laying low just in case Afghan intelligence come knocking on his door once again.

By Sue Turton, Al Jazeera, September 7th, 2010.

UN troops failed 242 women and children who suffered a mass rape attack in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), a top UN peacekeeping official has said.

Congo hosts the largest and most costly UN peacekeeping mission in the world, but the mass rape attacks happened just 30km from a UN base some time between July 30 and August 3 in the North Kivu region.

“Our actions were not adequate, resulting in the unacceptable brutalisation of villages in the area,” Atul Khare, under-secretary general for peacekeeping operations, told the UN Security Council on Tuesday.

He said that government of the DRC holds the primary responsibility for security in the area, but acknowledged that “Clearly, we have also failed”.

The area was reportedly over-run by rebels from neighbouring Rwanda and Congolese Mai Mai militia.

Rape warning

On July 30, the day the rapes began, the UN mission in North Kivu apparently received an e-mail warning that rebels had moved into the town and one woman had been raped there.

But the UN did not report it until ten days later.

Al Jazeera’s Cath Turner, reporting from the UN in New York, said the response of peacekeeping forces was “the biggest contention in this whole controversy”.

Our correspondent said Khare wants to see peacekeepers doing “more spot patrols, more random patrols and more night patrols” in an attempt to prevent further attacks.

Khare also wants to improve communications in the area as “there is next to no mobile phone coverage. The UN wants to put in signal towers … so it can better communicate with the troops there” in addition to improving early warning systems, our correspondent said.

Broad statement

Margaret Wallstrom, the UN special representative on the prevention of sexual violence in conflict, told the Security Council that some of the women were gang raped by up to five or six men and many were rounded up.

In terms of finding the perpetrators, our correspondent said there was a broad statement about bringing “them to justice”.

“A commission was formed, but there is no date set for when they will go to the DRC,” she said, noting that the UN is frequently criticised for talking a lot but not taking action.

“There is a kind of sense here that something has to be done. We are just going to have to see how that red tape and bureaucracy takes it forward.” Our correspondent.

From Al Jazeera and Agencies, September 8, 2010. Photos from AFP.

California regulators are seeking fines of up to $9.9 billion from health insurer PacifiCare over allegations that it repeatedly mismanaged medical claims, lost thousands of patient documents, failed to pay doctors what they were owed and ignored calls to fix the problems.

In court filings and other documents, the California Department of Insurance says PacifiCare violated state law nearly 1 million times from 2006 to 2008 after it was purchased by UnitedHealth Group Inc., the nation’s largest health insurance company by revenue.

Regulators said the companies broke promises to maintain smooth operations for 130,000 of PacifiCare’s customers, resulting in what insurance officials nationwide believe is the largest fine ever sought against a U.S. health insurer.

“This is about intentional disregard for the interests of doctors, hospitals and patients in California, and the pursuit of cutting costs at any means possible,” said Adam Cole, the insurance department’s general counsel. “It’s a story of intense corporate greed.”

PacifiCare and UnitedHealth Group have rejected the state’s assertions, and they are fighting the proposed fines in a lengthy legal hearing that began 10 months ago in Oakland and could conclude as early as next month.

The insurers maintain that the state’s case largely involves administrative errors that did little harm to anyone. They point out that three-quarters of the allegations relate to PacifiCare’s alleged failure during a short period in 2007 to inform doctors and patients in correspondence of their right to appeal coverage decisions.

“The allegations concerning claims processing by PacifiCare are simply not true,” spokeswoman Cheryl Randolph said. “By all objective measures, PacifiCare pays its claims timely and accurately.”

Based in Cypress, PacifiCare has more than 1 million customers in California. Most of its policyholders have HMO coverage. At issue in this case are members who get their care through preferred provider organizations, which reimburse doctors and hospitals for services and require patients to pay a share of the cost.

The state’s accusations are spelled out in documents filed with a state administrative law judge who has been hearing testimony intermittently since last December. At the conclusion of the Oakland hearing, the judge will decide whether to recommend penalties.

California’s elected insurance commissioner ultimately will decide whether to accept the judge’s recommendations, revise them or reject them. That decision can be appealed to the California Superior Court.

The potential penalties are so large because the state is seeking fines as high as $10,000 for each of the 992,936 violations it is alleging, for a maximum $9.92 billion.

The National Assn. of Insurance Commissioners said the total potential fines appeared to be the biggest of their kind.

The association’s former president, New Hampshire Insurance Commissioner Roger A. Sevigny, said it did not keep historical records of such actions, but “a penalty this size would likely be among the largest, if not the largest fine, ever required of a U.S. insurance company by a state insurance regulator.”

Those involved in the case said they expected the total fine — if there is one — to be far less than the maximum allowed. UnitedHealth Group said it would appeal any penalties that significantly exceed those levied in the past for similar violations.

At the heart of the case is the $9.2-billion deal that put PacifiCare under the wing of UnitedHealth Group, an insurance behemoth based near Minneapolis that now has 25 million policyholders in 50 states and had $81 billion in revenue last year.

When executives sought California’s approval for the acquisition in 2005, they assured then-Insurance Commissioner John Garamendi that they would maintain PacifiCare’s workforce, organization and relationships with providers.

“It makes sense to keep strong operations in California,” UnitedHealthcare’s former chief executive, Robert Sheehy, told Garamendi at a hearing that year. “I don’t believe you can manage California business outside the state.”

But complaints emerged soon after the deal closed. Doctors said PacifiCare failed to acknowledge their claims or to enter correct payment contract rates into its computer system, resulting in lower reimbursements. Providers also said the insurer mixed up which physicians belonged to its medical network.

Policyholders, meanwhile, inundated the Department of Insurance with complaints about PacifiCare losing their records, some of which were shipped to India, where they were miscoded and could not be retrieved. Many customers said the insurer denied claims for covered procedures and then ignored requests for help.

Cathy Wiser, a former PacifiCare policyholder from the San Fernando Valley, recalled her frustration with the company. Testifying at the outset of the administrative law hearing in December, she told how PacifiCare had rejected medical claims for her son, who had Crohn’s disease, even after she repeatedly faxed over forms indicating that he was covered.

PacifiCare lost the documents in its computer system, she said, heightening her anxiety over her son’s health.

“Nobody should have to go through this,” Wiser said in an interview last week. “Insurance companies should not be allowed to victimize patients at their most vulnerable, when they need them the most.”

State regulators investigated and, in early 2008, announced that they had uncovered 133,000 violations of state law with maximum penalties of $1.33 billion. The matter grew to nearly 1 million violations as the case unfolded this year in the administrative law court.

A second regulator, the state Department of Managed Health Care, fined PacifiCare $2 million over allegations that it improperly denied medical claims for HMO policyholders. The carrier paid the penalty but did not admit any liability.

PacifiCare executives said the company has been unfairly characterized by state officials as a bad corporate player even as it has worked hard to obey state law and meet the needs of the many groups that depend on it.

“We are committed to strong operational performance and maintaining a high level of service to physicians, hospitals and health plan members,” said Randolph, the PacifiCare spokeswoman. “Californians are highly satisfied with PacifiCare, and we have been recognized externally for the high-quality service we provide to our members and participating providers.”

By Duke Helfand, Los Angeles Times, September 7, 2010. Photo by Lawrence K. Ho, Los Angeles Times.

Eighteen people died and several others were wounded Tuesday in a shooting at a shoe factory in San Pedro Sula in northern Honduras, police said.

The incident began at 3:45 p.m., when two men carrying AK-47 assault rifles burst into the factory and began shooting, said Chief Hector Ivan Mejia of the San Pedro Sula Police Department. By the time police arrived a few minutes later, 13 people were dead in the building. Five others died at a hospital, he said.

The victims were in their teens and 20s, he said.

Efforts were under way Tuesday night to identify the bodies, which were being placed into yellow plastic body bags.

Mejia said he did not know the motive for the shootings and that no one had been arrested. “We will not rest until capturing the persons responsible,” he said.

The approximately 2,000-square-foot factory is located in a suburb in southeast San Pedro Sula, which is the industrial capital of Honduras.

The factory is in a primarily residential area reputed to be under the control of the notorious Mara 18, a ruthless street gang with links throughout Central America and the west coast of the United States, Mejia said.

Mejia noted that drug traffickers have proliferated in the area in recent years, but said police had no reason to believe that the shooting was drug-related.

From CNN, September 7, 2010. Journalist Daniel O’Connor contributed to this story from Tegucigalpa. Photos AFP/GETTY.

Wildlife enthusiast Jimmy Hoffman, 50, scours the vegetation around his home in the Costa Brava, Spain, looking for praying mantises.

After finding his subjects, Mr Hoffman can spend up to two hours waiting to get the perfect shot.

He said: “My favorite picture is of a mantis about to catch a butterfly. Unfortunately for the mantis the butterfly was too fast and managed to fly away before it could be caught. I got my picture at exactly the right moment and it was very special for me because I had waited a couple of hours for something interesting to happen. After that I decided to called the picture ‘patience’”.

He said: “I’ve been interested in nature since I was a child and I’ve always had an eye for wildlife, especially insects.

Praying mantids are my favorites because of their special predatory behavior, shapes and colours. I also like the fact that they can rotate their head in all directions and seem to look at you in an almost intelligent way.

They can be found by thoroughly searching through vegetation. The morning is usually the best time to do this because they often sit on top of plants and shrubs to warm up in the sun.” An Empusa Mantis larva looks as if it’s made from twigs, as it perches on one

A trio of Empusa Pennata mantises perch, clutched together, on a twig.

A trio of tiny Empusa Mantis larvae march along the stem of a rose, passing a thorn.

An Ameles Mantis eating tiny aphids.

A Religiosa Mantis tucks into a lacewing.

This is probably not a dew drop, but the contents of its stomach

Photographs by Jimmy Hoffman, Solent News, September 7, 2010.

Published by The Daily Telegraph, September 7, 2010.

Gen David Petraeus said that the plans by the evangelical Dove World Outreach Centre to destroy the Muslim holy book on its grounds on Saturday should be dropped.

“Images of the burning of a Koran would undoubtedly be used by extremists in Afghanistan – and around the world – to inflame public opinion and incite violence,” said Gen Petraeus.

“It is precisely the kind of action the Taliban uses and could cause significant problems. Not just here but everywhere in the world we are engaged with the Islamic community,” he said in a statement.

Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the Nato Secretary General, also expressed concerns about the risk to troops’ security and said that “such actions are in strong contradiction with all the values that we stand for and fight for”.

In 2005, 15 people died and scores were wounded in riots in Afghanistan sparked by a story in Newsweek magazine alleging that American interrogators at Guantánamo Bay had flushed a copy of the Koran down the lavatory to get inmates to talk.

The controversy comes amid a row in the United States about plans to build an Islamic centre and mosque two blocks from Ground Zero in New York.

The proposed centre has sparked vociferous opposition among Republican politicians and some family groups for victims of the al-Qaeda attacks.

A recent poll showed that 43 per cent of Americans have a negative attitude towards Muslims, whilst 25 per cent believe that the majority of Muslims living in the US aren’t patriotic.

Terry Jones, the pastor at the Dove World Outreach Centre, acknowledged the legitimacy of Gen Petraeus’s concerns, but vowed to go ahead with burning.

Mr Jones said in a statement released by his church: “We must send a clear message to the radical element of Islam. We will no longer be controlled and dominated by their fears and threats. It is time for America to return to being America.”

The church, which made headlines last year after distributing T-shirts that said “Islam is of the Devil”, has a regular congregation of only 50, but its plan has won thousands of followers on Facebook and has been widely reported in Muslim countries.

Mr Jones told The Daily Telegraph that he has received death threats and twice met the FBI to discuss his safety. He said he had purchased some copies of the Koran while others had been sent to him.

“We were not aware of what an impact it would have,” he said of the planned action. “We want to encourage people to burn the Koran to make a statement to honor those murdered on that day,” he added, referring to September 11, 2001.

Gen Petraeus commands an international force of more than 140,000 troops trying to suppress the Taliban insurgency.

More than 320 US troops have died in Afghanistan so far this year, exceeding the previous annual record of 304 in 2009.

By Alex Spillius in Washington, Daily Telegraph, September 7, 2010.

On Detroit’s east side, multiple homes are on fire on Moenart near Mound and McNichols. At least twenty homes were fully-engulfed near Quinn and Van Dyke.

Multiple homes are on fire on Robinwood Street and Van Dyke, near the fires on Quinn and Van Dyke.

Another set of homes are on fire at 7 Mile and Livernois on Detroit’s west side.

Firefighters were also battling an abandoned commercial building near Chene and Hendrie on Detroit’s east side.

Police are investigating the fires. Windy weather has hampered efforts to put out the flames.

From WXYZ Detroit, September 7, 2010.

A three-member panel of parole board commissioners conducted a video conference interview with Chapman from their offices in Rochester.

In their written comments, the commissioners told Chapman they had concerns “about the disregard you displayed for the norms of our society and the sanctity of human life.” After considering the action he took in 1980, they concluded Chapman’s “discretionary release remains inappropriate at this time and incompatible with the welfare of the community.”

Chapman’s latest request for freedom comes just months short of the 30th anniversary of the death of the former member of the Beatles.

The last time Chapman was up for parole, in 2008, the New York State Division of Parole issued a release saying his request was denied “due to concern for the public safety and welfare.”

He also was denied parole in 2000, 2002, 2004 and 2006.

Chapman, 55, is serving a sentence of 20 years to life in prison for the shooting death of Lennon outside Lennon’s New York City apartment on December 8, 1980.

He has served 29 years of his sentence at the maximum-security Attica Correctional Facility, where he is held in a building with other prisoners who are not considered to pose a threat to him, according to officials with the state Department of Correctional Services.

He has his own prison cell but spends most of his day outside the cell working on housekeeping and in the library, the officials said.

For the past 20 years he has been allowed conjugal visits with his wife, Gloria.

The visits are part of a state program called “family reunion” that allows inmates to spend up to 44 hours at a time with family members in a special setting. Inmates must meet certain criteria to receive the privilege.

Chapman has not had an infraction since 1994, said Erik Kriss, spokesman for the Department of Corrections said last month.

“He goes about his business, doing his prison job and without any fanfare,” Kriss said.

Yoko Ono, Lennon’s widow, in previous years has submitted a letter requesting that parole be denied.

Chapman is next eligible for a parole interview in August 2012.

By Laura Batchelor, CNN, September 7, 2010.

An American couple in Belize struggled Tuesday to figure out their future, their dreams literally up in smoke after a mob of indigenous Mayans burned down their animal sanctuary in the belief the foreigners fed two missing children to crocodiles on their property.

Cherie and Vince Rose moved to the tiny Central American nation in 2004 to form a 36-acre sanctuary for two species of endangered crocodiles found in Belize — the American and Morelet’s crocodiles.

Bit by bit, their hope turned into reality. They built a two-story octagonal-shaped house that rested on stilts and reached 30 feet into the air. They constructed two smaller cottages for researchers and students to stay in. They dug out two acres of canals for the crocodiles. They acquired two boats.

They called the place the American Crocodile Education Sanctuary.

Most of it vanished Sunday morning, when a throng of angry villagers from a settlement about 10 miles away torched the buildings on their property. The villagers had been told by a local psychic that the Americans had fed the two missing children to the 17 crocodiles at the sanctuary, police say.

The Roses were rescuing three crocodiles on a distant island at the time, so were not home to ward off the attack — or possibly suffer a gruesome fate.

“It was like something out of a Frankenstein movie,” Cherie Rose said Tuesday. “If we’d been home, they would have killed us. They said they were going to chop us up and feed us to the crocodiles.”

National police confirm that the indigenous Maya villagers were acting on the advice of a psychic who said the Roses had something to do with the August 7 disappearance of 9-year-old Benjamin Rash and his 11-year-old sister Onelia.

“They have their own superstitions,” deputy police commissioner James Magdaleno said about the Maya, who make up about 10 percent of Belize’s population. “Because of their beliefs, they decided to take the law into their own hands.”

No arrests have been made, the deputy commissioner told CNN.

“We don’t know who burned the house,” he said. “That is still under investigation.”

Police also questioned Vince Rose about the missing children but no connection was established, Magdaleno said Tuesday.

For the Roses, the drama unfolded in excruciating slow motion from far away.

They traveled August 29 to rescue some crocodiles on Ambergris Caye, a Caribbean Sea island off the northeastern coast of Belize. Their sanctuary in Punta Gorda is on the Caribbean coast in southeastern Belize, more than five hours away by land and airplane.

On Friday, September 3, the couple received phone calls from friends saying that truckloads of people from the village of San Marcos were on their way to the sanctuary to burn it down. The Roses sent their caretaker to the compound, but everyone was gone by the time he got there. The area around the two cottages had been trashed, though.

The Roses got more calls from friends Saturday, again telling them that villagers with shotguns and machetes were on their way to the sanctuary. The caretaker was afraid to got out there, Cherie Rose said, so they called police that night. The police said they couldn’t go on the property because the Roses’ two mixed-breed dogs were barking and would not allow them to enter, Cherie Rose recounted.

“By 9 a.m. Sunday, we were receiving frantic calls and texts,” Cherie Rose said.

By the time police got there, it was too late.

“They told us, ‘Oh, we’re sorry. Your place is burning to the ground as we speak,’ ” Cherie Rose said.

Life has been numbingly painful since.

“We’re in shock,” she said. “We’re totally devastated.”

Vince Rose still found it difficult to talk about Tuesday, having to stop several times during a phone interview to compose himself.

“They lost everything,” deputy commissioner Magdaleno said Tuesday.

Well, maybe not quite everything. Their two dogs — Rio and Maya — survived.

So did their spirit. They don’t know quite how, but they vow to stay in Belize and start all over.

“We love what we do and the adventure is just incredible,” said Cherie Rose, who is 44 and said she has a biology degree from Slippery Rock University in Pennsylvania. “We do more in one day than some people do in a lifetime.

“We are going to stay in Belize. We are going to fight this. I’m not abandoning those crocodiles down there.”

Her 48-year-old husband agrees.

“What we created was absolutely beautiful,” Vince Rose said. “No, I’m not going. We’re not letting them run us out of this country.”

http://www.americancrocodilesanctuary.org/

By Arthur Brice, CNN, September 7, 2010. Photos from ACES.

Terry Jones, pastor of Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Florida, who was interviewed on CNN’s “American Morning,” said the congregation is taking seriously the warning from the U.S. military that the act could cause problems for American troops.

“We have firmly made up our mind, but at the same time, we are definitely praying about it,” Jones said.

“We are definitely weighing the situation. We are weighing the thing that we’re about to do. What it possibly could cause. What is our actual message. What are we trying to get across.”

The planned action has drawn sharp criticism from Muslims around the world and from U.S. officials.

The U.S. Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Tuesday issued a statement saying the U.S. government “in no way condones such acts of disrespect against the religion of Islam, and is deeply concerned about deliberate attempts to offend members of religious or ethnic groups.” It emphasized that it strongly condemned “the offensive messages, which are contrary to U.S. government policy and deeply offensive to Muslims especially during the month of Ramadan.”

“Americans from all religious and ethnic backgrounds reject the offensive initiative by this small group in Florida. A great number of American voices are protesting the hurtful statements made by this organization,” the embassy said.

Gen. David Petraeus, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, said the burning of Islam’s holy books “could cause significant problems” for American troops overseas.

“It could endanger troops and it could endanger the overall effort in Afghanistan,” he said in a statement issued Monday.

With about 120,000 U.S. and NATO-led troops still battling al Qaeda and its allies in the Islamic fundamentalist Taliban movement, Petraeus warned that burning Qurans “is precisely the kind of action the Taliban uses and could cause significant problems — not just here, but everywhere in the world we are engaged with the Islamic community.”

Petraeus said he was concerned about the political repercussions of the church’s plan.

“Even the rumor that it might take place has sparked demonstrations such as the one that took place in Kabul yesterday,” he said. “Were the actual burning to take place, the safety of our soldiers and civilians would be put in jeopardy and accomplishment of the mission would be made more difficult.”

He said extremists would use images of burning Qurans to inflame public opinion and incite violence.

“And this would, again, put our troopers and civilians in jeopardy and undermine our efforts to accomplish the critical mission here in Afghanistan,” he said.

One of Petraeus’ deputies, Lt. Gen. William Caldwell, told CNN’s “The Situation Room” that the event “has already stirred up a lot of discussion and concern” among Afghans.

“We very much feel that this can jeopardize the safety of our men and women that are serving over here in the country,” said Caldwell, the head of NATO efforts to train Afghan security forces.

Caldwell said American troops “are over here to defend the rights of American citizens, and we’re not debating the First Amendment rights that people have.” But he added, “What I will tell you is that their very actions will in fact jeopardize the safety of the young men and women who are serving in uniform over here and also undermine the very mission that we’re trying to accomplish.”

“I would hope they would understand that there are second- and third-order effects that will occur that will affect that young man and woman who’s out there on point for America, serving their nation today, because of their actions back in the United States,” he said.

Thousands of Indonesians gathered outside the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia, on Sunday to protest the planned Quran burning.

“The burning is not only an insult to the holy Quran, but an insult to Islam and Muslims around the world,” said Muhammad Ismail, a spokesman for the hard-line Indonesian Muslim group Hizb ut-Tahrir.

Jones said his congregation is aware that the action is offensive.

“We realize that this action would indeed offend people, offend the Muslims. I am offended when they burn the flag. I am offended when they burn the Bible. But we feel that the message that we are trying to send is much more important than people being offended.”

Jones said Muslims are welcomed in the United States, if they observe the Constitution and don’t try to impose Sharia law, or Muslim law. The message, he said, is directed toward the “radical element of Islam.”

“Our message is very clear,” he said. “It is not to the moderate Muslim. Our message is not a message of hate. Our message is a message of warning to the radical element of Islam, and I think what we see right now around the globe provides exactly what we’re talking about,” he said.

The center says it was founded in 1986 as a “total concept church for the rich, the poor, the young and the old.” Its purpose is to “stand up for righteousness and for the truth of the Bible.” It stresses that “Christians must return to the truth and stop hiding.”

“We need to speak up against sin and call the people to repentance. Abortion is murder. Homosexuality is sin. We need to call these things what they are and bring the world the true message: that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life,” it says on the church’s website.

It also emphasizes its dislike of Islam, and on its website, it blog posts an item called “Ten Reasons to Burn a Koran.

“Any religion which would profess anything other than this truth is of the devil. This is why we also take a stand against Islam, which teaches that Jesus is not the Son of God, therefore taking away the saving power of Jesus Christ and leading people straight to Hell,” the site says.

“It is our vision to go around, to preach and to challenge, and to get the church involved and ready. We must go outside of the walls, and march for righteousness.”

Commenting the other day on Jones’ critique of Islam, Plemon el-Amin, the imam of an Atlanta, Georgia, mosque, said that his words are “really quite uninformed.”

“But in America, there is the freedom to be ignorant,” el-Amin said. “The only problem is in the world, many people don’t understand that particular freedom. So what he is doing is like shouting fire in a theater, in a world theater, and people are upset.”

El-Amin said Jones has boasted of never reading the Quran, so, “He doesn’t know that he’s going to burn a book that has some of the most beautiful passages about Christ Jesus throughout, as well as Moses, Abraham and all of the prophets he reads about and says he follows in the Bible.” But he said the best strategy would be to ignore Jones, “like we do people on corners saying the end of the world is coming.”

Other religious organizations have joined with U.S. Muslim groups to oppose the Quran-burning. The National Association of Evangelicals is urging the church to cancel the event, warning that it could cause worldwide tension between the two religions, and Christian, Muslim, Jewish and Hindu leaders in Gainesville have organized a “Gathering for Peace, Understanding and Hope” the night before the scheduled Quran burning.

The U.S. Embassy statement said that in his speech on Islam last year in Cairo, Egypt, President Obama said it is part of his responsibility to fight “negative stereotypes of Islam,” and he mentioned interfaith efforts “to counter this kind of ignorance and misinformation.”

“And during his recent Iftar speech at the White House, he said: Let me be clear: As a citizen, and as president, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as anyone else in this country.”

In the CNN interview, Jones was asked about the Christian principle of turning the other cheek — not acting out in violence or engaging in payback and in deed.

“I think in deed that most of the time, we as Christians are indeed called to turn the other cheek. I believe that most of the time, talk and diplomacy is the correct way. But I always think that once in a while, I think you see that in the Bible, there are incidents where enough is enough and you stand up,” Jones said.

An armed Christian organization that had pledged to protect the Dove World Outreach Center withdrew its support from the Quran-burning last week, stating the event “may diminish the work of the Holy Spirit to witness to Muslims.”

That group’s founder, Shannon Carson, said he agrees with the church’s stance on Islam, which he called a cult “that is invading our nation.” But he complained that the “liberal media” is using stories about Jones’ plans “to distract, divide and enrage the public.”

CNN’s Atia Abawi contributed to this report, September 7, 2010.

Police suspect that Angelo Vassallo, 57, was gunned down by the Naples-based Camorra mafia because of his outspoken defence of the environment and opposition to illegal construction rackets, one of the areas in which organised crime syndicates are most active.

His body was found on Monday in his car in a side street near his home in Pollica, a town of 2,500 inhabitants south of Naples. He had been shot nine times at close range.

Walter Veltroni, a centre-Left opposition leader and Italy’s former deputy prime minister, dismissed claims by Silvio Berlusconi’s government that numerous arrests of Mafiosi in the past two years have helped bring organised crime to its knees.

“An event like this shows that the emergency of criminality in Italy has not been overcome. It’s a mistake to think that the mafia is in crisis,” he said.

Although killings by Mafiosi are common, particularly in southern Italy, this is the first time a mayor has been murdered since 1980, anti-mafia campaigners said.

Angelino Alfano, Italy’s justice minister, described the killing as “a despicable act which will not go unpunished.” He said the authorities were determined to track down and bring to justice the perpetrators of “such a brutal crime”.

Gianni Alemanno, the mayor of Rome and the head of a national association of local authorities, called for a “very strong reaction” against “a direct and brazen attack on a democratic institution.”

“Mayors are on the front line on the ground and they must be defended from aggression by organised crime,” he said.

Mr Vassallo, a father of two, was regarded as a ‘green’ mayor for his efforts in helping preserve a national park and for fighting against illegal building close to beaches and other local beauty spots.

Shopkeepers in his hometown kept their shutters and doors closed as a protest at his death on Tuesday.

By Nick Squires in Rome, Daily Telegraph, September 7, 2010.

A few weeks ago, my friend, the designer Jean Paul Gaultier, launched with Elle magazine a special t-shirt he has designed for the Born HIV Free campaign, included with copies of Elle magazine sold in France during August.

This campaign, for the Global Fund, is about letting the world know that ending the transmission of HIV between mothers and children by 2015 is totally achievable.

It also asks for people to show their support for their countries’ contribution to the Global Fund, which already funds more than half of the programs around the world to help HIV-positive women prevent the virus being passed on to their children. (Although almost half of all women who need it receive treatment to prevent this transmission, still over 430,000 babies are born with HIV every year.)

On the upper right front of Jean Paul’s t-shirt — about where your heart is — is a printed inscription in Jean Paul’s handwriting that says: “Hope spreads faster than AIDS,” and below it is his signature. Jean Paul’s t-shirt is right on the mark — and a brilliant example of how the artistic community can help raise awareness about causes by using their creative energies make their fans and supporters aware of these issues.

In my role as ambassador for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria, I have the honor and good fortune to be able to bring together some of my peers, who are immensely talented in their artistic fields, to help spread the message of hope for the cause I represent in my ambassadorship, the protection of mothers and children from HIV. We will keep on doing that till we can proudly announce that the world carries no more babies with HIV.

An amazing collection of artists, musicians, and visionaries brought together by my friend producer Julien Civange who conceived the campaign have lent their talents to shed light on the global goal to end the transmission of HIV from mothers to their children by 2015.

Oscar-winning filmmakers H5 produced a series of short, beautiful and educational films that show how mothers with HIV can protect their children from the virus.

French artist Les Bonzoms created a series of animation films, accompanied by the music of Amy Winehouse, with babies floating through the sky, dreaming of a beautiful life that begins by being born free of HIV.

Paul McCartney streamed his concert in late June at Hyde Park exclusively through the Born HIV Free YouTube channel — the first time a European concert was ever streamed live on YouTube. And we have just launched a new campaign video, “Inside,” by trail-blazing animator Mac Guff Paris, with an instrumental version of “With or Without You” offered by U2.

The first step of the Born HIV Free campaign will end on October 5 at the Global Fund Replenishment Summit in New York, when donor governments will hear how many people from around the world (over 14 million) have shown their support for the dream of freeing future generations from HIV through this campaign’s website, YouTube channel and social media.

For the videos and other material on these virtual platforms, all the artists involved have created a mood of optimism, of certainty about a brighter future, of energy and possibility — one of hope for being so close to the first end game in the fight against HIV and AIDS, as Jean Paul’s t-shirt proclaims.

It takes an inspired group of visionaries whose work and talents are brought together to achieve any goal as ambitious as this one — and those in the world of the arts have their own part to play. If we all lend our voice, we can achieve a generation free of AIDS by 2015.

By Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, September 7, 2010.

Published by Huffington Post, September 7, 2010.

Carla Bruni-Sarkozy is the Global Fund’s Ambassador for the Protection of Mothers and Children Against AIDS. To sign up to the Born HIV Free campaign, go to the Born HIV Free web site, and for more about the Global Fund, visit globalfund.org.

The Great Buckwheat Shortage of 2010 was not letting up.

As if the summer’s brutal heat, forest fires and drought were not enough, this country is now suffering through one final bit of weather-related misery, a scarcity of a beloved staple that is causing a kind of national time warp. Russians like Ms. Litvyak, 72, a retired bookkeeper, are falling back on scrounging habits honed under Communism. And not liking it.

“I cannot locate buckwheat anywhere, and if I could, it would be too expensive for me to buy it,” she said as she entered a sprawling supermarket called Perekrestok (Intersection), where she would again be disappointed. “I went from store to store. I would ask, ‘When is the buckwheat coming in?’ and they would say, we don’t know, it’s because of the heat or because of the drought, or something like that. There is no buckwheat anywhere.”

Such complaints may seem trivial, but the authorities are taking them very seriously. Dating back to the czars, public discontent over shortages — of flour or sausage, table salt or vodka — has often touched off political instability in Russia.

When the Kremlin orders the riot police to break up opposition rallies, most people here tend not to care. But Russians eat buckwheat all day long, turned into a hot cereal for breakfast, a side dish with meat, stuffing, pancakes and in myriad other ways. Deprive them of it for any lengthy period, and the reaction could be fierce.

Several times in recent days, President Dmitri A. Medvedev has brought up the buckwheat shortage in visits to provincial centers, trying to assure the country that the government is working to alleviate it. He warned that law-enforcement agencies would crack down on those who manipulate the buckwheat market.

On Monday, Mr. Medvedev made a public appearance at a convenience store in Voronezh, 300 miles south of Moscow, where he questioned the clerk about the recent rise in prices for basic food. “Do you have any buckwheat?” he asked.

“Right now, there’s no buckwheat,” she responded.

He settled for some loaves of bread.

The buckwheat crop was undoubtedly affected by the drought, which is likely to cut overall grain production by about a third. But officials from the Kremlin on down insist that there are sufficient quantities of buckwheat available for Russian consumers, especially now that the government has banned grain exports until at least 2011 in order to stabilize the domestic market.

So suspicion has fallen on panic-buying, hoarding and speculation — practices that also hark back to Soviet times. Tales have abounded in recent days of wholesalers squirreling away storehouses of buckwheat to keep prices high, or of truckers scooping up all the available supply in some regions and then selling it in others at high markups.

“We need to reduce this panic-buying, including by explaining what is going on,” Mr. Medvedev said last week. “Today, I was speaking with some people — they also understand that it’s panic-buying, it’s speculation. But many people, especially the elderly, remember that if something is disappearing, then you have to immediately buy it, because later on there won’t be any.”

Before the summer, buckwheat typically retailed for no more than 50 cents a pound in Moscow. Now it is a $1 a pound or more, if it can be foraged at all. For the poor or the elderly, like Ms. Litvyak, whose pension is $350 a month, the current price stings.

Buckwheat is not as central to the Russian diet as wheat, but it is considered more of a distinctly Russian food, a hearty plant that flourishes on the Siberian steppes. Generations of children have been raised on the stuff, which is valued for its nutrients, and school lunchrooms seem to go through it by the ton. (While buckwheat is much less popular in the United States, people of Eastern European descent might know it as kasha, often served with mushrooms, onions or bowtie noodles.)

“For a lot of Russians, this is problem No. 1 now — where are you going to get buckwheat?” said Oksana Sidneva, 32, who was also at the Perekrestok supermarket. “It’s very healthy for our children, it has vitamins, it’s good for them. In America, you have nothing like this, right?”

Her son, Dima, 13, chimed in, “It’s the only cooked cereal that I will eat.”

The shortage is especially jarring because supermarkets and big box stores in Moscow and many other metropolitan areas have almost everything else, dispelling any possible notion that the-customer-is-always-wrong retailing of the Soviet era endures.

At the Perekrestok, a branch of a major chain, the aisle where buckwheat is usually located had stacks of numerous varieties of flour, rice, beans, lentils and chick peas. Nearby sections offer most, though certainly not all, of the products stocked in any American supermarket, from cheddar cheese to cherry tomatoes to potato chips, at similar prices.

Irina Yasina, an economist and commentator, said the buckwheat shortage demonstrated how Russians were scarred by Soviet hardships.

“The reaction to this is absolutely Soviet — it is a classic, Soviet-style panic,” Ms. Yasina said. “Remember, it has been only 20 years since the Soviet collapse. I am 46 years old. For 20 years, I have lived under normal conditions. But the rest of the time, I lived under conditions of total shortages. And habits acquired during childhood are stronger than any others. It becomes almost a reflex.”

Still, not everyone has been fretting. Some elderly Russians pointed out that the Soviet experience had endowed them with another characteristic: a stoicism that was rooted in the belief that this, too, would be weathered.

“I lived through World War II, when we had nothing to eat, only two potatoes a day,” said Valentina Novikova, 74, a retired teacher. “In the 1980s, there were such shortages, we stood on such lines. So if there are shortages of buckwheat — well, it’s nonsense. We lived through that, and we will live through this.”

By Clifford J. Levy, New York Times, September 7, 2010.

Photo of Medvedev by Mikhail Klimentyev.

Three icons, one of which contained relics of one of Russia’s most venerated saints, have been stolen from a church in a village north of Moscow, a police source said on Sunday.

The theft was apparently committed on Saturday afternoon. Priests discovered that the icons of St. Sergiy of Radonezh, Elijah the Prophet, and St. Cyril and Mary of Radonezh were missing from the St. Trinity church in Troitse-Seltso after a service.

St. Sergiy of Radonezh lived in the 14th century and is credited with consolidating the Russian Orthodox Church when it was threatened by Mongol rule. Fragments of his relics were contained in his icon.

Police suspect a local of stealing the icons and a search is underway.

From RIA Novosti, September 5, 2010. Photo By Yury Kaver RIA

George Soros, the billionaire investor and philanthropist, plans to announce on Tuesday that he is giving $100 million to Human Rights Watch to expand the organization’s work globally.

It is the largest gift he has made, the largest gift by far that Human Rights Watch has ever received, and only the second gift of $100 million or more made by an individual this year, according to the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University. “We’re seeing noticeably fewer charitable gifts at the $100 million level from individuals reported than we did just a few years ago,” said Patrick Rooney, the center’s executive director. “Between 2006 and 2008, an average of about 13 gifts a year of that size by individuals was reported. In 2009, it dropped to six, and this year, we know of only one other.”

The largest known gift in 2010 was $200 million pledged by an anonymous Baylor University graduate, to be dispensed upon the donor’s death, for medical research at the university.

Uncertainty about the direction of the economy has made even the wealthiest individuals more cautious about making big philanthropic commitments, Mr. Rooney said.

Contrariness, however, is a hallmark of Mr. Soros, both as an investor and as a philanthropist. While others have held on to their money, he has made bigger gifts than ever. And he said in an interview that the gift to Human Rights Watch is the first of a series of large gifts that he plans to make.

“This is partly due to age,” said Mr. Soros, who celebrated his 80th birthday last month. “Originally I wanted to distribute all of the money during my lifetime, but I have abandoned that plan. My foundation should continue, but I still would like to do a lot of giving during my lifetime, and doing it this way, with such size, is a step in that direction.”

Last year, in the depths of the recession, Mr. Soros gave the Robin Hood Foundation, a charity that fights poverty in New York, a $50 million contribution that helped it raise significantly more than that amount. He also gave every family with children on welfare in New York State $200 to buy school supplies, a grant worth $35 million that enabled the state to gain access to some $175 million in federal money for which it would not otherwise have qualified.

So far this year, Mr. Soros has donated about $700 million to various causes, including the gift to Human Rights Watch. His hedge fund, Quantum Endowment, grew 29 percent in 2009, earning him $3.3 billion in fees and investment gains.

Human Rights Watch will use the gift to add about 120 staff members to its team of 300 around the world, expand translation of its reports and open new offices. The intent, said Kenneth Roth, the advocacy group’s executive director, is to increase its influence in emerging power centers. The group, which is based in New York, investigates and draws attention to human rights abuses around the world.

Mr. Roth said that South Africa had more sway in Zimbabwe than the United States and other Western powers. Similarly, India, China and Japan are more influential in Sri Lanka. “We need to try to generate pressure on those governments, those emerging powers, now, which means expanding our capacity to deploy our information,” Mr. Roth said.

Mr. Soros put it differently. “I’m afraid the United States has lost the moral high ground under the Bush administration, but the principles that Human Rights Watch promotes have not lost their universal applicability,” he said. “So to be more effective, I think the organization has to be seen as more international, less an American organization.”

He said the gift to the organization was “also from my heart,” an acknowledgment of the training in human rights issues and philanthropy that he received from the group when he was just starting to emerge as a major donor.

“Every Wednesday morning at 8 o’clock, a group at Human Rights Watch got together and discussed issues with the managers,” Mr. Soros recalled. “I was an active participant in that group, and human rights remains an important element of my foundation’s current activities.”

Mr. Roth said few people then knew who Mr. Soros was. “We were just trying to figure out what we were going to do that week and so on, and he was just a guy at the meeting,” he said.

The grant is structured as a challenge that asks the group to raise $10 million from new, primarily international sources, each year for the next decade, but Human Right Watch will receive the Soros grant regardless. Roughly 30 percent of its revenue comes from countries other than the United States, but less than 1 percent is from non-Western countries, where much of the organization’s work is focused.

Mr. Soros wants to see the organization raise more money in places like Brazil, Mexico, India and China, which will be challenging, Mr. Roth said. “This is a transformative grant in more than one way for sure,” he said.

By Stephanie Strom, New York Times, September 6, 2010.

Hunting these pigeons was legal up to two years ago. Thanks to the information that we provided to the provincial authorities, in 2009 the province of Maniema instituted, for the first time, a period in which the hunting of green pigeons was banned. Didier Manara, the governor, also declared that he wanted a detailed inquiry into the hunting of these birds.

This ban was respected and certain local tribes even participated in the fight against poaching. The locals didn’t dare touch a pigeon, even during the hunting season, for fear of being punished. Here, people have difficulty understanding what is legal and what is illegal. The hunters only returned last January, when the governor was forced to resign following accusations of corruption.

From then on, the regulation was no longer respected. Although hunting is banned at the moment, in August a member of our team claimed that the poachers continue their carnage. Three men were arrested by forest rangers. We hope that these arrests will put a stop to poaching for a while.

The hunted animals are sold at various markets, several kilometres away from the mudflats. But it is not the people who buy grilled pigeon who get in the way of protecting the species. I believe that eating habits are very flexible and that they change as soon as prices increase or a particular type of food becomes scarce. It is the hunters and the sellers of grilled pigeon who are primarily responsible.

What this region needs in the long term is for people to understand the rules concerning natural resources and to respect the laws regarding the protection of nature. A protected zone is on the brink of being created. After three years, we have succeeded in obtaining the agreement of the indigenous tribes. All that remains is to get the approval of the government, and then the park can be created.

The fact that both local and international organisations don’t consider the green pigeon to be a species under threat, and that they don’t protect it from poaching, makes our campaign more difficult. For other species, like the bobobo chimpanzee, it is quite obvious that their status as species under threat, allows us to fight against poaching.”

For more information click on this link for Terese Harts’ Blog:

http://www.bonoboincongo.com/2010/08/18/pigeons-progress-in-congos-forest/

By Terese Hart, France 24 Contributor, September 6, 2010.

Transport workers began walking off the job last night, and many schools, post offices and government offices will be closed today. Demonstrations are planned in 137 cities.

Sarkozy has vowed not to compromise on the key plank of his pension proposals, which would lift the retirement age to 62 from 60. The bid to shore up the retirement system may calm bond investors and rating services in the wake of Europe’s sovereign debt crisis.

“The weeks ahead will be a crucial period that could bolster or weaken the government’s credibility on fiscal policy,” Olivier Gasnier, an economist at Societe Generale Cross Asset Research in Paris, said in a note to clients today. “A delicate balance now begins for the government: standing firm on the reform’s fundamentals and particularly its financial architecture, without risking a 1995-like worsening of the social climate.”

France now pays about 2.6 percent to borrow for 10 years, compared with 3 percent for the U.K. and 2.7 percent for the U.S. Still, that’s more than the 2.3 percent paid by Germany, whose bunds set Europe’s benchmark borrowing costs. All have the highest ratings from companies including Moody’s Investor Corp. and Standard & Poor’s.

Bond Spread

The French-German spread widened to as much as 55.6 basis points, more than half a percentage point, on June 8 on concern that Sarkozy was falling behind Germany in curbing debt. The spread may widen again if the pension reform fails, say investors including Axel Botte.

“If there are huge demonstrations, if the reforms come into political difficulty, it could become a problem for the market,” said Botte, who helps oversee about 500 billion euros ($640 billion) at Axa Investment Managers. “It is a worry.”

Massive strikes have blocked earlier attempts to stem losses in the pension system. The state pension fund will lose 10.7 billion euros this year, with the shortfall reaching 50 billion euros in 2020, with no change in policy, according to the Budget Ministry.

‘Absolutely Essential’

“The pension reform is absolutely essential,” said Philippe Delienne, chairman of Convictions Asset Management in Paris, which oversees 780 million euros. “It’s very important for France to be credible within Europe and to show the rest of Europe that the big countries are doing their bit.”

Under the bill parliament will consider starting today, the age at which full benefits can be tapped will rise to 67 from 65. The government has said it’s willing to negotiate over allowing earlier retirement for some hardship jobs and for people who began their careers as teenagers. Sarkozy’s Union for a Popular Movement has a 101-seat majority in the 577-member lower house.

“The government could make some compromises during the debate, but on the core of the reform, nothing can change, because this reform is necessary,” Claude Gueant, Sarkozy’s chief of staff, said in an interview on Europe 1 on Sept. 5.

Unions oppose raising the retirement age, saying taxes on capital and on high earners should be increased.

“We expect the demonstrations and the strike to put pressure on the government to reopen the debate,” Francois Chereque, the head of Confederation Francaise Democratique du Travail union, said on French radio RTL today. “We will wait for the government’s reaction to determine what to do next.”

‘Need Big Demonstration’

Jean-Claude Mailly, the head of union Force Ouvriere, said he wants at least 2 million marchers across France today. “We need a big demonstration to weigh on the government,” he said on LCI television. The march in Paris, where cloudy but dry weather is forecast, starts at 2 p.m. local time. Heavy rains are forecast in the south and east of the country.

The Paris metro said two lines are running normally and eight lines have at least one in two trains operating, with the remaining four lines running one train out of three. On the RER commuter network, line “A” has one train in two, while line “B,” which connects the airports to downtown, is virtually shut.

Rail Disruptions

Just under half of the high-speed trains between Paris and provincial cities will run today, the state rail network said. Normal service is forecast for Eurostar to London and Thalys to Brussels. To Frankfurt, two out of five trains will operate, while Geneva runs will be at half service. There is no service on trains to Italy and Spain, and there will be no night trains in France tonight.

France’s civil aviation authority, the DGAC, ordered airlines to cut flights in and out of the two main Paris airports by 25 percent.

Air France, the country’s largest airline, says all its long-haul flights will operate, as will 90 percent of the short- and medium-haul flights from Roissy-Charles de Gaulle airport and 50 percent from Orly.

Both sides claim public opinion with them. In a poll published on Sept. 5 in the newspaper France-Ouest, 70 percent said they supported the strikes while 53 percent thought it “acceptable” to raise the retirement age to 62. The Ifop poll questioned 957 people. No margin of error was given.

Opposition to tighter pension rules sparked extended strikes in 2003 and 2007. In 1995, President Jacques Chirac dropped an attempt to eliminate retirement privileges for transport workers after walkouts crippled the country.

France’s legal retirement age has been 60 since Socialist President Francois Mitterrand cut it from 65 after his 1981 election. Meanwhile, Germany decided in 2007 to raise its retirement age gradually to 67 from 65. Spain and Italy have also increased their retirement ages to 65 to address the squeeze of longer life expectancies and declining birth rates.

By Gregory Viscusi and Mark Deen, Bloomberg, September 7, 2010.

With assistance from Anne-Sylvaine Chassany in Paris. Editors: James Hertling, Jennifer Freedman

Hurd, a close friend of Oracle CEO Larry Ellison will replace Charles Phillips, who has resigned, Oracle said in a statement on Monday. Phillips was co-president alongside Safra Catz, who remains in her role.

Ellison had slammed HP’s decision to oust Hurd, calling the actions of HP’s board “cowardly.

Hurd resigned from HP on August 6, after a probe into sexual harassment allegations. HP said at the time that he filed inaccurate expense reports related to Jodie Fisher, a marketing contractor who worked for Hurd’s office from 2007 through 2009.

“Mark did a brilliant job at HP and I expect he’ll do even better at Oracle,” said Ellison in a statement on Monday.

Shares of HP are down 13 percent since Hurd’s resignation. Plucked from relative obscurity to head HP, Hurd is credited with resuscitating the technology giant by cutting costs and pursuing ambitious acquisitions.

HP said the expense reports were meant to hide a “close personal relationship” with Fisher, a sometime actress who has appeared in television shows and movies.

Oracle, the world’s third largest software maker, competes with HP as well as with International Business Machines Corp and SAP.

“I believe Oracle’s strategy of combining software with hardware will enable Oracle to beat IBM in both enterprise servers and storage,” Hurd said in Monday’s statement.

In June, Oracle reported a quarterly profit that exceeded Street projections and a 14 percent climb in sales of new software, signaling the tech spending recovery is on track as businesses shell out on big-ticket items again.

“Oracle is clearly capitalizing on this opportunity to get someone strong from a top hardware company,” said Forrester analyst James Staten. “In terms of how this helps Oracle against IBM, there is reason to be optimistic.”

Still, Staten noted there will now be two strong personalities at the top.

“So Mark Hurd will have someone who’s very hands-on sitting above him,” Staten said. “But we have to assume they’ll get along.”

Phillips, along with Oracle’s other president Catz, had at one time been seen as a possible successor to Ellison.

A former star software analyst at Morgan Stanley, Phillips was put on the spot earlier this year when huge billboards depicting the married software executive with YaVaughnie Wilkins, his former mistress, appeared in New York, Atlanta and San Francisco.

The billboards with the words “You are my soulmate forever!” appeared to be an attempt by Wilkins to embarrass Phillips after their relationship ended and he returned to his wife.

He was also publicly corrected by his company after he said Oracle could “easily” spend about double the $35 billion it had spent over the past five years. That prompted a company spokeswoman to issue a statement saying the company did not have a five-year M&A budget.

Ellison said in Monday’s statement that Phillips had approached him last December “and expressed his desire to transition out of the company.” Ellison said in the statement he asked him to stay on through the integration of Sun Microsystems. Oracle bought computer maker Sun in 2009 in a deal worth more than $7 billion.

By Megan Davies and Ritsuko Ando, Reuters, September 7, 2010.

Tensions flared Monday in the immigrant neighborhood of Westlake as dozens of protesters and Los Angeles police faced off at the site where a day laborer was fatally shot by police a day earlier.

The angry crowd gathered at 6th Street and Union Avenue, a bustling corner where Los Angeles Police Department officers said they were confronted Sunday by a knife-wielding man who refused commands to drop his weapon.

The protesters, claiming the man was unarmed, used a bullhorn to shout in Spanish — “Assassination!” “Assassination!” and “We want justice!” — as they marched along 6th to the Los Angeles Police Department’s Rampart station. Onlookers watched from their apartment windows, while others joined the procession as LAPD officers monitored the action from nearby corners and adjacent streets.

At one point, police in riot gear faced off with a shouting throng near a series of memorials hung from a fence by the sidewalk where the man was killed on 6th Street. He was identified by friends as Manuel Jamines, 37, a Guatemalan immigrant who came to Los Angeles seven years ago.

“He was not a criminal,” said Juan Velasquez, who said he is from the same village as Jamines.

Julio Martinez, 57, said he was walking along 6th on Sunday when he saw officers from the LAPD’s bicycle unit fire their weapons at Jamines, who was not armed, according to Martinez.

“I did not see a knife in his hands,” Martinez said, adding that he heard two gunshots.

LAPD Capt. Rigo Romero said officers recovered a knife from the scene and that detectives were investigating the killing.

“Our investigation is going to be transparent,” he said. “We take every force investigation very, very seriously.”

At one point, protesters got into a shouting and shoving match with a store security guard, who fled to his car and sped away as people hurled objects and kicked at his vehicle.

As the crowd gathered at the corner, Guatemalan Consul General Pablo Garcia Saenz arrived to ask that people protest peacefully and assure them that his staff was in contact with the LAPD. His assistants said that a community meeting was planned for 7 p.m. Tuesday at the Guatemalan Consulate.

“We do not want any more violence,” Saenz told the crowd in Spanish.

By Robert J. Lopez, Los Angeles Times, September 6, 2010.

A third man survived last month’s massacre of 72 migrants by suspected drug traffickers in Mexico and is now in the United States, Salvadoran President Mauricio Funes said Sunday.

“We know of a Salvadoran who is in the United States and who fortunately avoided getting killed,” Funes said. “His testimony will be key in solving the case.”

Mexico has said 77 people were in the group of Central and South American migrants who were abducted and held at a ranch in the northern state of Tamaulipas, which has been embroiled in a vicious turf battle between the Zetas gang and its former employer, the Gulf cartel.

The Attorney General’s Office said Friday the number included the 72 people who were found dead, two who were known to have escaped and three Mexicans whose whereabouts were unknown.

Funes announced the existence of the third survivor Sunday during a ceremony to receive the bodies of 11 Salvadorans killed in the massacre, but gave no give further details.

The Mexican Attorney General’s Office declined to comment on Funes’ statement. Mexican officials didn’t initially reveal that more than one person survived the massacre, confirming there was a second survivor only after Ecuador’s government revealed that information.

Earlier Sunday, Ecuadorean Justice Minister Jose Serrano said authorities in the South American nation had arrested a man suspected of smuggling to Mexico 18-year-old Luis Freddy Lala Pomavilla, one of those who survived the massacre.

Miguel Angel Dutan Meneses was arrested Saturday at his house in Biblian, a hamlet 140 miles (230 kilometers) south of the capital of Quito. A judge ordered him jailed while authorities investigate, Serrano said.

Among the suspect’s possessions, authorities found a money order for $3,000 made out to a woman in Honduras, said Romeo Garate, district attorney in the province of Canar, where Biblian is located. Garate told local media that could indicate Dutan is part of a larger smuggling network.

Authorities believe Dutan also smuggled a second Ecuadorean who was killed in the massacre, Garate said.

Mexican authorities believe the Zetas kidnapped the migrants — most if not all of whom were headed to the United States — and gunned them down after they refused to work for the cartel.

Marines found their bound, blindfolded bodies slumped against a wall when they raided the ranch.

Cartels have increasingly tried to recruit vulnerable migrants to smuggle drugs, Mexican officials say.

By Diego Mendez, Associated Press, September 6, 2010. Associated Press Writer Gabriela Molina in Quito, Ecuador, contributed to this report.

It is at least the second time this year that a family has been caught up in a shooting involving Mexico’s military, which has come under intense criticism for human rights abuses as soldiers fight brutal drug cartels.

Javier Trevino, Nuevo Leon state lieutenant governor, said soldiers apparently shot at the car when the driver failed to stop at the checkpoint Sunday on the highway connecting the northeastern city of Monterrey to Laredo, Texas.

But the boy’s mother and uncle said the family had just passed a military convoy when the soldiers opened fire.

Patricia Castellanos, a 45-year-old tamale vendor, said they were returning to Monterrey after visiting her sister in the town of Salinas Victoria. Castellanos said she and her husband were traveling with their teenage son, their 24-year-old daughter, their son-in-law and their two grandchildren, ages 8 and 9.

The 15-year-old, Alejandro Leon, was shot in the head and back and died at the scene. Castellanos’ husband, bricklayer Vicente Leon, was struck in the back and died at the hospital.

“I don’t know how to explain the pain I’m feeling,” said Castellanos, her eyes welling as she sat with her brother in her small home in a working-class neighborhood on the outskirts of Monterrey. “Because of a mistake, they suddenly ended my son’s life and my husband’s life.”

She had gauze wrapped over her shoulder where a bullet grazed her.

A small photograph of Alejandro Leon wearing a cap and gown from his junior high school graduation sat on a bookcase.

His uncle, Luis Castellanos, said the boy was a good student and his parents worked hard to keep him in school.

“Everyone asks for justice. But who ever gets justice?” he said.

The Defense Department promised an investigation and expressed its “deep condolences to the family” in a statement.

Patricia Castellanos said a military commander had visited her in the hospital to apologize, and the state government offered to help pay medical and funeral expenses.

“An apology doesn’t remedy anything,” Luis Castellanos said. “The military had gained our respect, but now when you see them, all you feel is fear.”

Federal security spokesman Alejandro Poire expressed the government’s “sincere condolences” and pledged the shooting would be investigated.

Patricia Castellanos’ daughter, Iliana Leon, was cut in the face by flying glass and was awaiting plastic surgery at a hospital. Her son-in-law was shot and is in serious condition at a local hospital and two young children, Iliana’s sons, were being treated for cuts and shock.

This latest shooting comes as the military faces a controversy involving the April death of two brothers, ages 5 and 9, on a highway in Tamaulipas, a state bordering Nuevo Leon.

The National Human Rights Commission has accused soldiers of shooting the children and altering the crime scene to try to blame the deaths on drug cartel gunmen. The commission also said it would open a file on the Sunday shootings.

The army denies the allegations and says the boys were killed in the crossfire of a shootout between soldiers and gunmen.

The scandal has renewed demands from activists that civilian authorities, not the army, investigate human rights cases involving the military.

More recently, soldiers killed a U.S. citizen Aug. 22 outside the Pacific coast resort city of Acapulco.

In a statement to police, an army lieutenant claimed that Joseph Proctor, who had lived Mexico for several years, shot first at the military convoy on a highway between Acapulco and Zihuatanejo.

The Defense Department said it was investigating the officer’s claim, which Proctor’s father, William Proctor, said he found hard to believe.

The administration of President Barack Obama is withholding $26 million in aid to Mexico, recommending that the government give more power to its human rights commission and crack down on abusive soldiers.

In a report released last week, the State Department said the Mexican government has met human rights requirements to receive $36 million in previously withheld funds that are part of a $1.4 billion Merida Initiative.

But the U.S. said it would withhold 15 percent of newly authorized funds until Mexico meets several requirements: enhancing the authority of the National Human Rights Commission, limiting authority of military courts in cases involving abuse of civilians, and improving communication with human rights organizations.

The Mexican government said it is working to improve human rights but noted in a statement that cooperation between the two countries “is based on shared responsibility, mutual trust and respect for the jurisdiction of each country, not on unilateral plans for evaluating and conditions unacceptable to the government of Mexico.”

By Mark Walsh and Olga R. Rodriguez, Associated Press, September 6, 2010.

At the same time, the administration separately announced that Mexico would receive $36 million in already-scheduled funds from the Merida Initiative but that another $26 million was being withheld until “additional progress can be made” on human rights issues in Mexico.

The State Department’s report on Mexico was sent to Congress last week but has not been publicly released.

The administration wants Mexico to increase the authority of its National Human Rights Commission and for Mexican soldiers to be prosecuted on human rights charges in civilian courts rather than military tribunals. Soldiers and officers are rarely if ever convicted on such accusations in military courts, even as rights complaints have skyrocketed since President Felipe Calderon launched the army-led campaign against drug-trafficking groups in late 2006.

On Sunday, Mexican soldiers opened fire on a family’s car at a highway checkpoint in the northern state of Nuevo Leon, killing a man and his teenage son and injuring five others. The Mexican army is implicated in the shooting deaths of two children in April. In March, a suspected drug gang member was photographed being hauled into the custody of marines one day, then showed up dead on a roadside the next.

Mexico’s Interior Ministry said it would be paying the funeral expenses of Sunday’s shooting victims, citing the military’s “error” in the incident.

After last week’s announcement about the withheld money, Mexico’s Foreign Ministry responded with a measured critique. “Cooperation with the United States against transnational organized crime through the framework of the Merida Initiative is based on shared responsibility, mutual trust and respect for the jurisdiction of each country, not on unilateral plans for evaluating and conditions unacceptable to the government of Mexico,” the statement said.

Meanwhile, as promised last year, the governments of the U.S. and Mexico opened a joint office — the Merida Initiative Bilateral Implementation Office — in Mexico City. Merida is a three-year program approved by the George W. Bush administration that designates $1.6 billion to Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean, with the lion’s share, $1.4 billion, earmarked for Mexico.

By Daniel Hernandez in Mexico City, Los Angeles Times, September 6, 2010.

The recession is taking a toll on union jobs, which are disappearing in California at a faster rate than anywhere else in the country, according to a UCLA study published Monday.

In the 12 months ending in June, the union membership rate dropped from 18.3% to 17.6% in California and from 12.4% to 12.1% nationwide, the study found. The drop was most acute in the counties of Los Angeles, Riverside, Orange, Ventura and San Bernardino, where unionization rates fell from 17.5% to 16.5%.

The loss of union jobs has wiped out two years of gains, putting membership rates in the U.S. and California back to around 2007-08 levels, said Lauren Appelbaum, director of the UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and Employment and the report’s lead author.

“Earlier in the recession, jobs were disappearing, but these were not necessarily union jobs, so the percentage of workers who were union members continued to increase,” she said.

The losses have been particularly acute in private sector industries such as residential construction and manufacturing. For the first time, the number of union members nationwide is greater in the public sector than in the private sector: 7.76 million compared with 7.19 million, the study found.

The California manufacturing industry alone has shed 28,000 jobs since 2009. The only significant increase was in the state’s wholesale and retail industry, which added nearly 25,000 jobs.

The findings in the report, The State of the Unions in 2010: A Profile of Union Membership in Los Angeles, California and the Nation, were based on labor figures from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and the U.S Census Bureau.

Despite the losses, California still accounts for about 16% of the nation’s nearly 15 million union members, more than any other state.

The report came as no surprise to members of the Service Employees International Union, who gathered Monday at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels to celebrate a Labor Day Mass.

Marta Escobar, a single mother of four, was one of 16 janitors who lost their jobs last month cleaning two office towers owned by JPMorgan Chase in Century City. She said she spent years cleaning homes and is particularly concerned about losing the benefits that come with a union job, including healthcare for her younger children.

“The job is really important for me because it means I can offer my kids a future,” Escobar said. “Nothing extravagant, but a future.”

JPMorgan Chase says the dispute is between a vendor it contracts with to clean the towers and the vendor’s employees.

SEIU officials say the loss of union jobs will be felt throughout the community.

“I think union jobs are a way to restore the common good in our community,” said SEIU President Mary Kay Henry. “Because workers have a way to raise their wages, that allows for more tax revenue to be invested in our communities, and hopefully union workers can join hands with their employers to make sure that the enterprise profits … and employs more people.”

By Alexandra Zavis, Los Angeles Times, September 6, 2010.

Avigdor Lieberman said the Israeli government must keep its promise to voters that the 10-month slowdown, declared last November under U.S. pressure in order to draw the Palestinians to the negotiating table, will end as scheduled at the end of the month.

The Sept. 26 deadline is a challenge for the fragile talks launched in Washington last week. The Palestinians say they will quit the talks if settlement construction accelerates, but not ending the slowdown could potentially bring down the Israeli government. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has yet to say how he will handle the deadline.

“A promise is a promise,” Mr. Lieberman told Israel Radio. “We will not agree to any extension.”

“I promise that if there’s a proposal that we don’t accept, it will not pass,” he stated.

Mr. Lieberman’s Yisrael Beitenu party is a key member of Israel’s governing coalition, which is led by Mr. Netanyahu’s Likud Party.

It holds 15 seats in parliament, making it the second-largest member of the coalition and giving it the ability to rob the government of its parliamentary majority if it pulls out. Other coalition partners, and members of Mr. Netanyahu’s own party, also favor resuming construction.

In a sign that compromise was possible, however, Mr. Lieberman told the daily Yediot Ahronot that he would not quit the coalition even if he does not get his way.

“We will not leave or bring down the government. We will fight from the inside for what we believe,” he told the paper.

At the summit marking the relaunch of peace talks in Washington last week, Mr. Netanyahu used unusually warm language about the Palestinian leadership and the chances for peace. But the Israeli foreign minister has been vocal in his pessimism.

Speaking to diplomats in Jerusalem on Monday, Mr. Lieberman said the stated goal of the talks — a peace agreement within one year — was unrealistic.

The Israeli government says construction in settlements continued during previous rounds of peace talks and that building does not compromise a future deal.

Mr. Lieberman’s party ran on a platform that questioned the loyalty of Israel’s one-fifth Arab minority, and Mr. Lieberman, known for blunt and often unpredictable language, is perhaps Israel’s most polarizing politician. A resident of a West Bank settlement himself, he has absented himself from active involvement in the peace talks, which are being conducted by Mr. Netanyahu’s office.

Vice Prime Minister Silvan Shalom, a prominent member of Mr. Netanyahu’s party, said extending the slowdown would pose a “huge danger” to the coalition.

“Within the coalition, there is a huge majority against it,” Mr. Shalom told reporters late Sunday. He said the issue could only be resolved through negotiations.

Mr. Netanyahu is seeking a way to get through the Sept. 26 deadline without dismantling his coalition, alienating the Palestinians or angering the U.S. administration, which is backing the talks and has invested time and political capital in their success.

Mr. Netanyahu is slated to meet Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas for a second round of talks next week in Egypt and Jerusalem. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton also is scheduled to attend.

About 300,000 Israelis live in West Bank settlements, among the territory’s approximately 2.5 million Palestinians. In addition, almost 200,000 Israelis live in East Jerusalem, the section of the holy city claimed by the Palestinians.

The Palestinians and the international community say the settlements are obstacles to peace because they eat up land the Palestinians want for a future state.

The slowdown has cut the construction in the settlements, though the extent of the drop is the subject of disagreement.

According to official government statistics released last week, a total of just five new building projects were begun in settlements in the first half of 2010, compared to 673 in the first half of 2009.

Israeli advocacy groups tracking settlement construction dispute those numbers.

The group Peace Now says building has begun on about 450 new housing units since the slowdown went into effect last November, around 300 of them in violation of the terms of the freeze. Peace Now says those numbers mark a drop of about 50 percent in new projects.

Settlement expert Dror Etkes said government statistics show the number of units under construction overall in the first quarter of this year was 2,517, a drop of just 15 percent compared to the last quarter of 2009.

Groups critical of settlement building say if the slowdown is revoked now it will have had nearly no effect on settlement construction in the long term.

By Matti Friedman, Associated Press, September 6, 2010.

But this is no act of nature. It is the result of the steady labor of fewer than a dozen barefoot men, who have blasted away at the earth for three days with high-pressure water hoses and earthmovers, searching for gold and destroying a swathe of rain forest.

The miners near a small town called Nieuw Koffiekamp, at the edge of Suriname’s vast rain-forest hinterland, planned to spend a week tearing into the soil and filtering it through toxic mercury. Then, they will start over again somewhere else.

Juergen Plein, a 29-year-old miner, said he needs the work, and doesn’t know any other way to get at the precious metal.

“I think about it,” Mr. Plein, nearly shouting over the roar of generators, said of the damage. “But survival comes first.”

Thanks to record gold prices, hundreds of small-scale mining operations are proliferating along the northeastern shoulder of South America. Small-scale miners produced a record of nearly 16.5 metric tons of gold in 2009, according to Suriname’s government.

Miners are tearing up trees, poisoning creeks with mercury and, in some places, erecting makeshift jungle towns with shops, prostitutes and churches. In their wake is a wasteland, said Dominiek Plouvier, regional representative of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).

“All the topsoil has been removed, it’s finished,” Mr. Plouvier said. “This ecosystem is very fragile. It is very difficult to get it back in these areas.”

The miners, many of them illegal migrants from Brazil, are scattered throughout the northern Amazon basin, occasionally fleeing crackdowns by police or the military in Venezuela, French Guiana and Guyana.

But nothing seems to stop them in Suriname, a country rich in resources with the weakest law enforcement in the region.

The new government that took power in August is expected to at least attempt to address the issue. Vice President Robert Ameerali said they will seek to reduce the use of mercury, which is illegal but widely available to miners who use it to separate gold from ore.

Mining consultant Chris Healy said Suriname should set aside areas for small-scale miners and regulate their activities, providing training and assistance to acquire less-polluting technology.

“You can make all kinds of laws and enforcement,” he said. “But there is nobody there to enforce it.”

An estimated 14,000 small-scale miners and service providers work in Suriname’s interior, said Marieke Heemskerk, a consultant and anthropologist who has tracked mining in the country for years.

The rampant and unrestricted subletting of mine concessions is illegal, but it’s largely tolerated by the government — and it gives people work.

Mining is a touchy subject in Suriname, which has gained praise over the years from environmentalists for placing limits on logging and setting aside large rain-forest preserves.

The metal, shipped to refiners in North America and Europe, is one of the main exports in a largely poor country of nearly 500,000 people that is about the size of Georgia.

It is an important source of income, particularly for Maroons, the descendants of runaway slaves, and Amerindians in the interior, who make money providing transportation or selling access to their land concessions.

In recent years, small-scale miners have grown more destructive as they use more heavy equipment such as earthmovers — flown into remote spots in the jungle or shipped down rivers — to work faster or in more remote, larger areas.

In a country with few real roads, it is difficult to find the mines. But from the air it’s a different story.

Satellite analysis of the scarred earth and diverted waterways shows that miners in Suriname have deforested at least 74,000 acres and damaged more than 1,370 miles of river over the past decade, Mr. Plouvier said.

WWF estimates the small-scale mining is also responsible for some 20 tons of mercury entering the environment and posing a risk to people through fish consumption.

Some parts of Suriname have become like the Wild West, only with all-terrain vehicles (ATV) and satellite dishes.

Associated Press journalists visited a mining area about 100 miles south of the capital Paramaribo, reachable only by boat, followed by a bone-jarring ATV ride through the dense jungle.

All around were the huge telltale piles of discarded soil and open pits. In the middle of a network of trails was a town of sorts. The one-street settlement — more of an outpost in the jungle — was a dusty clearing and a line of simple, plywood structures.

There were two markets, two churches and four bars, festooned with small Brazilian flags. In the lull of a rainy afternoon, bored prostitutes sat watching TV until the customers returned. Plastic bottles, beer cans and other trash was strewn about everywhere or smoldering in burning piles.

Ines Aboikonbie, who runs a bar with her Brazilian husband, said the settlement of about 200 will probably move soon along with the miners in search of gold.

The largest gold mine in the country, at Rosebel not far from Nieuw Koffiekamp, is run by Toronto-based IAMGOLD Corp. and employs 1,100 people. The mine produced nearly 12 metric tons of gold last year.

But while all mining draws critics, environmentalists are more worried about the damage done by small operators over a wide expanse.

IAMGOLD spokesman Bob Tait said many people — including several hundred it accuses of illegally mining on its concession — prefer the informal sector because they like the flexibility and dream of finding riches. “Sometimes it’s hard for us to compete,” he said.

Mr. Plein, the miner at Nieuw KoffieKamp, is a thin man with a scraggly beard and dreadlocks pulled back behind his head. He said the amount his crew earns depends on how much gold they find and how much fuel they use trying to find it — they might gross $40,000 before paying for the equipment rental and dividing the proceeds.

One of the biggest challenges, he said, is finding a place to search amid fierce competition and competing claims on land.

“It’s hard,” said Mr. Plein, a Maroon who grew up in the town of dirt streets and small wooden homes. “But I’m used to it.”

By Ben Fox, Associated Press, September 6, 2010.

Mr. Thomas died Sunday in Ohio of pancreatic cancer, according to a statement from Carlotta Walls LaNier, who also enrolled at Central High School in 1957 and is president of the Little Rock Nine Foundation.

The integration fight was a first real test of the federal government’s resolve to enforce a 1954 Supreme Court order outlawing racial segregation in the nation’s public schools. After Gov. Orval Faubus sent National Guard troops to block Mr. Thomas and eight other students from entering Central High, President Eisenhower ordered in the Army’s 101st Airborne Division.

Soldiers stood in the school hallways and escorted each of the nine students as they went from classroom to classroom.

Each of the Little Rock Nine received Congressional Gold Medals shortly after the 40th anniversary of their enrollment. President Clinton presented the medals in 1999 to Mr. Thomas, Ms. LaNier, Melba Patillo Beals, Minnijean Trickey Brown, Elizabeth Eckford, Ernest Green, Gloria Ray Karlmark, Terrence Roberts and Thelma Mothershed Wair.

In 2008, then President-elect Obama sent Mr. Thomas and other members of the Little Rock Nine special invitations to his inauguration as the nation’s first black president. During his campaign, he had said the Little Rock Nine’s courage in desegregating Central High helped make the opportunities in his life possible.

Mr. Thomas played a number of sports and was on the track team at Dunbar Junior High School, but others had little to do with him once he entered Central, the state’s largest high school.

“I had played with some of the white kids from the neighborhood,” Mr. Thomas said. “I went up to Central High School after school, and we played basketball and touch football together. I knew some of the kids.

“Eventually, I ran into them . . . and they were not at all happy to see me,” Mr. Thomas added. “One of them said: ‘Well, I don’t mind playing basketball or football with you or anything. You guys are good at sports. Everybody knows that, but you’re just not smart enough to sit next to me in the classroom.’”

Ms. Beals said Monday that Mr. Thomas was nicknamed “‘Roadrunner’ because he was so fast. You could sometimes avoid danger by running fast.”

She said by phone from her home in California that Mr. Thomas always seemed to bring a light moment to the crisis.

“He was funny; he had a most extraordinary sense of humor. He did sustain an enormous amount of damage and pain during the Little Rock crisis, but no matter what, he always had something refreshing and funny to say,” she said. “It could be the most horrible day, and he would say, ‘Yes, but how are you dressed, and are you smiling?’”

Mr. Thomas also brought a bit of levity to the 2007 commemoration marking the 50th anniversary of the integration fight — letting the audience know how angry Ms. LaNier was with him when he stood up and cheered at a Central High Tigers pep rally.

Mr. Thomas thought the white students were carrying the school flag and yelling the school cheer. He said Ms. LaNier glared at him and later set him straight: It was the Confederate flag, and the students were singing “Dixie.”

After graduation, Thomas served in the U.S. Army in Vietnam and later became an accounting clerk with the Department of Defense.

Following the 2008 election, Mr. Thomas said in an interview that he supported Hillary Rodham Clinton in the Ohio primary and he also liked former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who made a bid for the Republican nomination.

“It would have been a hard decision for me to make if Huckabee was running against Obama,” Mr. Thomas added.

Still, he said, he was overjoyed with Mr. Obama’s victory.

“This was really the nonviolent revolution,” Mr. Thomas said. “We went and cast our ballots, and the ballots were counted this time. I’m thinking now we’ve got to do something. I don’t know what. But there are a lot of things Obama ran on, what he’s saying he wants to do.”

By Tom Parsons, Associated Press, September 6, 2010.

The 57-year-old Russian Prime Minister appeared to deliberately fan speculation on Monday when he met with foreign academics and journalists at the Black Sea resort of Sochi.

When asked whether his potential re-election to the presidency would jeopardize Russia’s political system, Mr Putin likened himself to FDR, the United State’s longest-serving president.

“In his day, US President (Franklin) Roosevelt was re-elected four times in a row because this did not contradict the American Constitution. Neither I nor President (Dmitry) Medvedev will do anything that contradicts existing Russian legislation and the country’s basic law,” he said.

Mr Putin stood down from the Russian Presidency in 2008 after two consecutive terms due to a technicality but speculation is now rife that he will return to his old job in 2012 when a new presidential election looms.

“I believe that all actions within this process and within the basic law cannot, by definition, harm the development of the democratic process in the country. Both I and President Medvedev have repeatedly said what we will do: in our actions we will be guided by the actual situation in the country, what we have done and the mood of the public,” he added. “We have not (yet) decided what will be the best for Russia.”

Mr Putin’s aides have likened him to President Roosevelt in the past, arguing that he saved Russia from the anarchic 1990′s in the same way that Mr Roosevelt helped the United States overcome the Great Depression.

Mr Putin also took the opportunity to belittle European attempts to reduce the continent’s dependence on Russian energy supplies and argued that Russia needed no sudden “leaps” but only stable development.

From The Daily Telegraph, September 6, 2010.

In a heated exchange, Ms Rice had to argue with the US President in Florida not to return to the White House because it was a potential terrorist target.

She told the Channel 4 documentary: “The President got on the phone and he said: ‘I’m coming back’.

“I said: ‘You cannot come back here. The United States of America is under attack, you have to go to safety. We don’t know what is going on here’.

“He said: ‘I’m coming back’. I said: ‘You can’t’.

“I said to him in a raised voice, and I had never raised my voice to the president before, I said: ‘You cannot come back here’. I hung up.

“The president was quite annoyed with me to say the least.

“I’ve known the president a long time and I knew that he wanted nothing more than to be there at the helm of the ship.”

Ms Rice also revealed that the bunker beneath the White House, where she was sheltering with Vice President Dick Cheney, began to run out of air.

She said: “There were so many people in the bunker that the oxygen levels started dropping and the secret service came in and said we’ve got to get some people out of here.

“They literally went around telling people that they weren’t essential and they had to leave.”

Meanwhile, the government communication systems were failing and even Mr Bush resorted to an unsecured line to talk to Washington.

Ms Rice said: “Despite all of the sophisticated hierarchy, sophisticated command and control equipment that we had, at that moment much of it didn’t function very well and people instead did whatever they could to communicate messages. And frankly we then had to make it up.

“I think back on the number of cell phones that were probably used to communicate the most sensitive information because somebody was driving in or somebody couldn’t get to a landline.

“And I think how really dangerous that was because if the terrorists were monitoring our communications, they would have heard a lot on cell phones.”

Mr Bush gave the order authorising the airforce to shoot down any commercial airliner that was not responding.

And when United 93 came down Ms Rice and the other officials believed it may have been shot out of the sky.

She said: “Everyone in that room thinks that perhaps it’s been shot down. I got on the phone with somebody at the National Military Command Centre… just saying: ‘You must know whether or not you you’ve shot down a commercial airliner or not.’

“That was just a horrible thought that the American air force would have shot down innocent civilians, that was a horrible thought.”

She continued: “As I’ve reflected now on what the passengers and crew of, of 93, flight 93 did, first of all there’s a sense of personal gratitude that they may well have saved my life, me personally.

“I also think of what they did for the country because had another plane hit the White House or the capital I just don’t think we had much more capacity to absorb greater shock than we already had.”

From Press Association and Daily Telegraph, September 6, 2010.

The 12th century Saint-Jean cathedral of Lyons, southeastern France, has hundreds of gargoyles around its roof whose traditional role has been to ward off evil spirits.

Since August, this seat of the Archbishop of Lyons has a new addition – a face remarkably similar to Ahmed Benzizine, a Muslim foreman who has been restoring churches and cathedrals in France for the past 37 years.

Emmanuel Fourchet, a local stone mason decided to immortalise his friend according to an age-old tradition of carving gargoyles resembling associates that stretches right back to the cathedral’s construction.

“It could have been the face of a Portuguese man or anyone else but it happens to be an Algerian Muslim Arab – my friend Ahmed,” he said.

However, while some have praised the initiative as a unifying “ecumenical gesture”, the move has sparked cries of blasphemy among the more conservative elements of the churchgoing community who have sent angry letters of complaint.

One hardline youth group, the Jeunes Identitaires Lyonnais, sent the church a statement saying: “While in many Muslim countries, the Christian faith is forbidden and Christians martyred, in Lyons, Muslims have the luxury of quite calmly taking possession of our churches with the complicity of the Catholic authorities.”

“Let those who criticise it tear it down,” said Mr Benzizine. “To say God is Great whether referring to Judaism, Christianity or Islam is the same thing, I don’t see the problem,” he said.

“Perhaps it should be taken as a symbol for young Arabs from the suburbs that to integrate you need to get involved”.

Church leaders dismissed the criticism.

The cathedral’s rector, Father Cacaud, said: “They didn’t ask me for my explicit authorisation but when they told me about this friendly nod to Ahmed, I was very happy.”

“If I took these people who are so offended by this beautiful gesture on a tour of the cathedral, I could show them gargoyles that would shock them far more,” he said, “Ones that are frankly erotic”.

By Henry Samuel in Paris, September 6, 2010.

The actor said the legal case had already caused “unbelievable stress and pain” to his family.

Jett, 16, who was autistic, died of a seizure in January 2009 while the Travolta family was on holiday in the Bahamas.

The Pulp Fiction and Grease star, and his actress wife Kelly Preston, were later the victims of an alleged extortion plot.

Ambulance driver Tarino Lightbourne, who was among those treating Jett, was alleged to have sought the $25 million payment, with the assistance of local politician Pleasant Bridgewater, in return for not releasing private information about the death.

Travolta gave evidence at a trial in the Bahamas last year in which he described how he desperately tried to save his son’s life.

While the jury was still deliberating a Bahamian politician suggested publicly that one of the suspects had been acquitted, which led to a mistrial. Travolta’s lawyers had indicated that he was willing to testify again in a second trial, which was due to start imminently.

But prosecutor Neil Braithwaite asked for the case to be dropped.

“The Travolta family has said that this matter has caused them unbelievable stress and pain and they wish to put this whole thing behind them,” he said.

In a statement Travolta said: “The long pending status of this matter continued to take a heavy emotional toll on my family, causing us to conclude that it was finally time to put this matter behind us.

“Therefore, after much reflection, I concluded that it was in my family’s best interest for me not to voluntarily return to the Bahamas to testify a second time at trial.”

He thanked Bahamian authorities for their work on the case.

By Nick Allen in Los Angeles, Daily Telegraph, September 6, 2010.

There was little sign of a reoccurrence of the protests in the capital Maputo, mainly by young men who were assembled in part by anonymous text messages calling for action.

Whether due to a judicious technical malfunction or deliberate jamming by the authorities, mobile telephone users in Mozambique reported being unable to send texts.

Police are now trying to establish who were the protest ringleaders – opposition parties have denied any involvement.

Police spokesman Joaquim Selemane told a local broadcaster that six people had been arrested over the weekend on suspicion of sending the rallying text messages.

A further three were reportedly arrested yesterday, accused of trying to spread the protests to the northern province of Nampula.

Mr Selemane said another 142 people have been arrested on suspicion of vandalism and theft over the burning of tires and attacking of cars.

After a quiet weekend, police numbers were increased in Maputo amid rumors of more unrest to come.

But according to Americo Ubisse, who heads the Red Cross operation in the country, the situation has remained calm.

“No incidents have been reported to us but we are monitoring the situation closely so we are in a position to deal with any that arise quickly,” he said.

“I have received no text messages calling for protest since yesterday but I have received other messages today. It is possible that (a block on text messages) is some act by the government but it’s too early to say with certainty.”

Opposition parties and human rights groups have criticised the government, saying it failed to gauge the anger that would be unleashed by a 30 percent bread price rise and increases in water and electricity tariffs.

Around 450 people were injured in addition to those killed following clashes with police using rubber bullets from Wednesday until Friday last week.

Mozambique’s health minister Ivo Garrido said yesterday the numbers of dead had risen. “On Friday, two more lifeless bodies were taken to a Maputo hospital. One patient died last night in Maputo central hospital,” he said.

By Aislinn Laing in Johannesburg, Daily Telegraph, September 6, 2010.

More than 80 years ago, Germany sold tens of thousands of bonds to American investors in an effort to recover financially from World War I. Later, Adolf Hitler used some of the money raised by those bonds to build the powerful Nazi war machine that would ravage Europe during World War II.

Now, a half-dozen U.S. bondholders are turning to federal courts in an effort to force Germany to make good on its promise to repay the debts, which today could be worth hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars. Action has been heating up in lawsuits filed in Miami, New York and Chicago, including a victory for investors last month when an appeals court rejected Germany’s attempt to dismiss their case.

If the bondholders ultimately win, their lawyers could ask judges to seize German assets in the U.S. to repay them, a tactic that has worked in other legal disputes over money owed by foreign governments.

But if Germany prevails, the bondholders argue, it could undermine the global system through which governments raise money by issuing bonds.

“Our position is not only correct under the law, it would avoid such a potentially far-reaching precedent,” said investor attorney Sam Dubbin of Coral Gables, who has frequently represented Holocaust survivors in Nazi-related claims.

Enrico Brandt, a spokesman for the German Embassy in Washington, said the lawsuits are baseless. Brandt said the only way bondholders can redeem the securities is to go through a validation process mandated by a 1953 international treaty and later enshrined in German law.

“Consequently, the efforts of the plaintiffs to outmaneuver the validation procedure by suing in the United States will fail,” Brandt said in an e-mail. “Any bond passing the validation procedure successfully will be honored.”

Even with the questions of the bonds’ validity, a robust market has developed with people around the globe buying and selling them in hopes they one day can be redeemed.

Bondholders claim in their lawsuits Germany has erected a nightmarish maze of bureaucratic red tape around the validation process. One key issue for many bonds is a purported Soviet Red Army plunder of thousands of bonds in 1945 from a Nazi vault as the war ended. Germany said those bonds had already been redeemed to the government, but were still improperly resold around the world. Any from that batch would therefore be invalid, the government argues.

Court documents indicate that Germany has repeatedly cited a “list of stolen bonds” in denying payment, but attorneys for bondholders say Germany won’t share its list or allow it to face public and legal scrutiny. The validation law also requires the difficult task of proving the bond wasn’t physically present in Germany on Jan. 1, 1945, not long before Germany surrendered.

“There are so many problems with the validation process that there is no real validation process,” said Tampa attorney James Lowy, who represents a group of investors separate from those Dubbin works for.

Dubbin said documents from a German archive show most of the looted bonds were returned by the Soviets, a conclusion echoed by historians hired by lawyers in the New York case.

Germany also has claimed it is not subject to U.S. court rulings regarding its bonds, a stance rejected by federal appeals courts in Atlanta and New York. The New York court, however, dismissed one bondholder lawsuit on grounds that they did not first seek repayment through the German validation process. The bonds in that case are valued at more than $400 million.

If Germany ultimately loses in American courts and still refuses to pay the bondholders, their U.S. attorneys could ask judges to seize German assets in this country or ask German courts to enforce the judgment. Lawyers in a separate case previously seized millions of dollars in Cuban assets frozen in the U.S. to pay lawsuit damages.

Richard Buxbaum, an international law professor at the University of California at Berkeley, said the U.S. government set up a fund for investors by seizing Chinese assets in a case involving unpaid bonds from pre-communist China. In the German bonds case, he said, the key for a U.S. judge will be to decide if Germany’s system of authenticating the securities passes U.S. constitutional muster.

“You have to show some proof of ownership,” Buxbaum said. “My guess is that the American courts would apply the German law.”

Germany tried to win dismissal of the lawsuit filed by Dubbin’s clients, World Holdings LLC, on grounds that the matter didn’t belong in U.S. courts. But a federal judge in Miami rejected that and her decision was upheld Aug. 9 by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which took pains to point out the issue remains unsettled. Germany could still appeal the decision.

None of the bondholders suing in U.S. courts would agree to comment for this story.

The U.S. court battles are only the latest intrigue to surround the bonds, first issued by Weimar Republic in the 1920s as Germany struggled to recover from World War I, which had ended in 1918.

The bonds were sold in the U.S. from 1924 to 1930 to help Germany invest in new projects and industries and pay war reparations. One series, known as the Dawes Bonds, raised $110 million in 1920s dollars – the equivalent of about $1.2 billion today; another series called the Young Bonds generated more than $98 million – about a billion today.

Investors were told the German bonds were guaranteed safe. Even President Calvin Coolidge urged Americans to snap them up.

But things changed after 1933, when Hitler and the Nazis rose to power. Hitler defaulted on the bonds and ordered that none be repaid, causing them to plummet in value worldwide. Then, Germany began quietly buying them up for pennies on the dollar before World War II began in 1939, stashing thousands in bank vaults and reselling others.

The upshot was that Germany got to keep all the money raised through the bond sales, leaving investors in the cold. And Hitler was able to use a chunk of the money “to rebuild Germany’s war machine,” according to Dubbin’s lawsuit.

Dubbin and Lowy argue the issue remains relevant today.

“It’s a question of accountability,” Lowy said. “They are saying, ‘We will build things with your money but we’re not going to pay you.’ You think these bonds are safe. They’re not.”

For a related article on German pre-war bonds;

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,653269,00.html

By Curt Anderson, Associated Press, September 6, 2010.

Lebanon’s prime minister has said he was wrong to accuse Syria of killing Rafik al-Hariri, his father, in 2005 and said the charge against Damascus had been politically motivated.

Saad al-Hariri’s comments to Asharq al-Awsat, a London-based newspaper, published on Monday, repudiate his earlier accusation that Syria was behind the Beirut bombing which killed his father and 22 others five years ago.

Syria had repeatedly denied the charge, which was supported by an initial United Nations report in 2005, which implicated Syrian security forces in the attack.

Damascus rejected the UN report, saying it was “100 per cent politically biased”.

The assassination provoked a domestic and international outcry which forced Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president, to withdraw troops from Lebanon, ending nearly three decades of military presence in its smaller neighbour.

Rafik al-Hariri had called for such a withdrawal for years.

Hariri has since attempted to mend relations with Damascus, visiting al-Assad several times in the last year and stressing Lebanon’s need for strong ties with Syria.

“We assessed the mistakes that we made with Syria, that harmed the Syrian people and relations between the two countries,” Hariri told Asharq al-Awsat.

“At a certain stage we made mistakes and accused Syria of assassinating the martyred premier. This was a political accusation, and this political accusation has finished.”

Tribunal backed

Rula Amin, AL Jazeera’s correspondent in Beirut, said: “We have to remember this is not a very surprising turnaround.

“He [Hariri] has been reaching out to Syria and the Syrian president in the past years since he took office and became Lebanon’s prime minister.

“He [Hariri] went to Damascus about four times, he met with the Syrian president who drove him around Damascus in his own car, had dinner together, hosted him in his own palace.

“We have to also remember the political picture here has changed in the region. When he [Hariri] accused Syria, Syria was isolated, the US was trying to isolate it, trying even to change the regime there.

“Now Syria has emerged from its isolation as a very strong player in the region … and so he [Hariri] has to adjust.”

Rafik al-Hariri’s killing remains a highly charged issue in Lebanon, with a UN tribunal continuing investigations into the assassination.

In July, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shia movement, said he expected the tribunal to indict members of his movement for involvement in the killing.

Nasrallah has dismissed the tribunal as an Israeli project, but Hariri, who leads Lebanon’s fragile national unity government, which includes Hezbollah ministers, has defended the tribunal’s independence.

“The tribunal is not linked to the political accusations, which were hasty … The tribunal will only look at evidence,” Hariri was quoted as saying by newpaper.

From Al Jazeera and Agencies, September 6, 2010. Photo credit: AFP.

North Korea has finished preparing for a key meeting of its ruling communist party, a South Korean official has said, but there it was still unclear when it would get under way.

The Workers’ Party Convention, the first of its type since 1966, is widely expected to confirm the youngest son of leader Kim Jong-Il as his eventual successor.

Official state media in North Korea said the convention in Pyongyang, the capital, was slated for “early September” but it did not provide specifics.

“It looks like the city and provincial-level delegates’ elections have been finished,” said Chun Hae-Sung, a spokesman for South’s Korea’s unification ministry, which handles cross-border relations.

“There have been numerous reports about recent flood damage in the country, but it looks like all the preparatory steps for the meeting have been taken regardless.”

Swiss-educated son

Rodong Sinmun, the North’s ruling party newspaper, said party delegates from all corners of the country were gathering in the capital.

“A historical moment that will open a significant new chapter in the history of our party is about to come,” the newspaper reported on Monday.

“The people’s hearts awaiting the revolutionary, festive occasion heat up due to their joy and happiness.”

Posters promoting the convention have been hung around Pyongyang and troops, artillery and tanks were said to be massing outside the city.

Little is known about Kim Jong Un, the Swiss-educated youngest son of the current leader, who is expected by analysts to take over from Kim in the politically isolated communist state.

‘Revolutionary occasion’

Good Friends, a South Korean welfare group which has cross-border contacts, said that the ruling party’s main session is expected to take place on Wednesday, a day before North Korea celebrates the anniversary of its founding on September 9, 1948.

Thousands of people rallied over the weekend waving red and pink plastic flowers in an apparent rehearsal for the main event, China’s Xinhua News Agency said.

The convention follows an unusual trip Kim made recently to China, where he met with Hu Jintao, China’s president, in what was seen by some as preparation for a change in North Korea’s leadership.

China, North Korea’s main ally, provides the country with much of its trade and diplomatic support.

Kim is believed to have speeded up succession plans after reportedly suffering a stroke in August 2008.

The convention comes amid tensions with the United States and the international community over North Korea’s nuclear programme, and with authorities in Seoul over the deadly sinking of a South Korean warship in March.

From Al Jazeera and Agencies, September 6, 2010.

The rearrest and trial of Iranian human rights activist and journalist Shiva Nazar-Ahari adds another name and face to a long list of those targeted by the government there, charged with a list of extraordinary offences and subjected to an opaque justice system.

Hers is not an exceptional case, as the government continues to expand its crackdowns beyond the leaders of the opposition and those who follow them in protest marches. Women’s rights activist are also targeted, and such is the situation for women’s rights advocate and attorney Nasrin Sotoudeh, whose home and office were raided a week ago. According to Gooyanews.com, security forces seized personal effects, computers and files. Sotoudeh was ordered to report to the public prosecutor’s office with her attorney, Nasim Ghanavi, who was told that she could not accompany her client during questioning. Charged with threatening national security and collusion, Sotoudeh was arrested on Sunday and taken to Evin prison.

Like Alikarami, Sotoudeh worked with Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi and has been harassed repeatedly by the government. In an interview with International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran prior to her arrest – Sotoudeh, who has been told to cease her activities, said that she had previously been called before the tax authorities.

“I was referred to the taxation bureau and while there I noticed in addition to my name, they are conducting special investigations into 30 human rights lawyers,” she said, adding that the government is targeting human rights lawyers on tax charges because they take on pro-bono cases.

“The only institution capable of defending lawyers is the Bar Association, but the authorities are putting it under tremendous pressure and attempting to incorporate it into the judiciary and take away its independence.”

When I interviewed exiled journalist Masih Alinejad in May on the issue of jailed journalists for a project, she told me that journalists and activists are routinely arrested, released on bail, and rearrested, just as Nazar-Ahari was. This, she told me, has the effect of keeping an individual in a prisoner’s state of mind, even when out on bail.

The most grievous of the accusations levelled against Nazar-Ahari is that of being a mohareb, or enemy of God, which, under Iran’s Sharia law, carries a death penalty. There has been considerable movement since the June 2009 disputed presidential elections to try anyone who protests against the government, participates in what is deemed as un-Islamic activities (such as celebrating the Persian new year festivities) or watches BBC Persian as a mohareb.

That Nazar-Ahari’s case even got to court is far from standard. Leila Alikarami, a human rights lawyer who I also interviewed for the same project on the Iranian press as a Wolfson Press fellow at Cambridge University, explained that in many cases, journalists and activists are denied access to an attorney, are never in fact charged with an offence, and are locked up indefinitely. Typically, the reason given for this is that the investigation into the case against the prisoner is ongoing.

Of course, this way of doing things is not unique to the post-revolution Iran of the past 30 years. Under the Shah’s rule, journalists, human rights activists or anyone seen as an agent of disruption were seldom granted trials, nor was it so unusual for them to die while in prison. The official line was that these prisoners, such as journalist Karimpour Shirazi, had committed suicide, but given the absence of transparency in the system, such declarations were viewed with suspicion.

Having already spent nearly nine months in the notorious Evin prison, Nazar-Ahari denied  the charges filed against her in court on Saturday. But given how the regime chooses who to detain, arrest and try in its courts, even an acquittal, however just, could hardly be considered a victory.

By Dorothy Parvaz, Al Jazeera, September 6, 2010.

Campaigners there are calling on the government to take action, but as Craig Mauro reports from the province of Buenos Aires, people are already seeing the effects of several decades of drinking arsenic-contaminated water.

By Craig Mauro, Al Jazeera, September 6, 2010.

President Barack Obama has unveiled an ambitious plan to revamp the US transport infrastructure in a bid to kickstart the country’s ailing economy ahead of forthcoming mid-term congressional elections.

Obama is expected to face intense pressure over the economy in the run-up to the November 2 election, which could see his Democratic Party lose control of Congress under a barrage of Republican criticism.

The $50 Billion plan, which was formally announced by President Obama on Monday, outlines improvements to the US road system, an acceleration of high speed rail projects, and establishes a centralized “Infrastructure Bank” to coordinate planning and funding the projects.

It targets rebuilding 150,000 miles of roads, adding 4,000 of rail and replacing 150 miles of airport runway. The plan is designed to answer critics who have said the American highway network is in poor condition and to create jobs at a time of high unemployment in the US. Almost one in ten Americans is out of work and the economy is shedding jobs every month.

End tax breaks

The White House says the plan could be paid for by cancelling tax breaks for American oil and gas companies, thus avoiding adding to the country’s spiralling national deficit.

“This is a plan that will be fully paid for. It will not add to the deficit over time -we’re going to work with Congress to see to that,” President Obama said as he outlined the proposals.

But plan has been met with stiff opposition from Republicans, who see the initiative as the Obama administration attempting to spend its way out of trouble.

“A last-minute cobbled-together stimulus bill with more than $50 billion in new tax hikes will not reverse the complete lack of confidence Americans have in Washington Democrats’ ability to help this economy,”  Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader, said in a statement.

“After the administration pledged that a trillion dollars in borrowed stimulus money would create four million jobs and keep the unemployment rate under eight per cent, their latest plan for another stimulus should be met with justifiable skepticism,” he said.

John Boehner, the Republican leader of the house of representatives, was equally dismissive of the president’s plan.

“We don’t need more government ‘stimulus’ spending — we need to end Washington Democrats’ out-of-control spending spree, stop their tax hikes, and create jobs by eliminating the job-killing uncertainty that is hampering our small businesses,” Boehner said.

President Obama admitted on Monday that there is no “silver bullet” for the economy, but pledged to dedicate his presidency to improving the economic plight of many Americans. ”I am going to keep fighting, every single day, every single hour, every single minute to turn this economy around,” he said.

Administration officials have said that they hope the plan will be passed into law quickly. ”The economy needs additional investment as quickly as possible,  but we want to do something that will help the economy over the next six years,” a White House official said.

But it is unlikely that the investment plan will be passed by Congress before the mid-term elections, which are being seen as a referendum on President Obama’s economic managment during his first two years in office.

If, as feared by many Democrats, Republicans win back control of the Congress in the elections, President Obama will find passing legislation more difficult, as Republicans have overwhelmingly rejected his calls for a bipartisan approach to tackling America’s economic difficulties.

The infrastructure plan is part of wider bid by the White House to stimulate slowing growth rates. The US saw second-quarter growth of just 1.6 per cent after first-quarter figures of 3.7 per cent, raising fears that the country is slipping back towards recession.

On Wednesday President Obama will visit Ohio, also badly hit by the recession and its aftermath, where he will unveil a $100 billion series of tax-breaks for small businesses.

From News Agencies, Al Jazeera, Associated Press, September 6, 2010.

A scientist in the UK has said that the cockroach could hold the answer to beating new diseases resistant to currently available antibiotics.

A researcher at Nottingham University said in a press release on Monday that he has found molecules in the brain and nervous system of cockroaches that kill superbugs.

Superbugs have gained notoriety in recent months over claims that they have developed to make mainstream drugs ineffective against them.

Simon Lee, a postgraduate researcher at the university in central England, tested the molecules found in the internationally disliked insect.

Human cells unaffected

Lee discovered that the compounds are toxic for more than 90 per cent of Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) – a superbug continually found in hospitals in the western world – and Escherichia coli – which causes food poisoning – germs.

Tests have now begun to see if the molecules will provide an antibody for emerging superbugs such as Acinetobacter, Pseudomonas and Burkholderia.

Lee said that considering the habitats of cockroaches, it is unsurprising that they carried their own antimicrobial drugs.

“Insects often live in unsanitary and unhygienic environments where they encounter many different types of bacteria. It is therefore logical that they have developed ways of developing themselves against micro-organism,” he said.

Lee has shown that the extracts do not negatively affect human cells.

He will be presenting the work at a Society for General Microbiology meeting this week.

Work to identify any active ingredients that could result in antibiotics is expected to take many years.

“We’re a long way from these being active drugs,” Lee said.

http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/News/pressreleases/2010/September/CockroachAntibiotics.aspx

From Al Jazeera and University of Nottingham, September 6, 2010.

Grand Isle – Several gulf residents have tested positive for oil in their blood as documented by Matt Smith and Heather Rally on the Intel Hub Radio Show last Thursday. Further testing is currently being preformed to find out if the chemical dispersant Corexit, made by Nalco, has entered the bloodstreams of gulf coast residents.

Smith, who is on scene in Louisiana had this to say:

“It’s deadly because it’s accumulative…. the issue here is that these are residents these aren’t even the workers… everyone is getting sick….. it has turned into an aerosol in the air, and no one is talking about this, no one.”

The testing did come back with unusually high amounts of toxins in the subjects bloodstreams indicating that the government and the EPA have been lying to the general public about the health effects and the air quality in the region. A fact that we pointed out over two months ago.

Another major fact to consider is that gulf residents who have not had testing done to document their illness, symptoms, and or accumulative toxicity levels, will be short changed when it comes to future claims against BP.

There have been rumors that the massive oil plumes in the gulf have been gobbled up by bacteria in the recent weeks, however this  is absolutely not the case. Project Gulf Impact has documented massive plumes of oil in and around the gulf coast area.

” We are seeing massive plumes, and more oil than ever”

If anything these massive plumes have been pushed under the surface from the over use of dispersant.

Other strange events include the fact that the Dept. of Defense and or BP are still spraying the toxic dispersant Corexit throughout the region. And if that is not strange enough, they are using unmarked aircraft to do it.

To top it off, a vast area of the gulf have been deemed a no-fly zone. Many journalists and reporters have been threatened, fined, or detained trying to cover what is really going on inside this military operation. There is no doubt that the Gulf of Mexico has become a militarized zone over the past three months, indicating that there is something of importance still taking place in the gulf that we are currently unaware of.

By Shepard Ambellas, The Intel Hub, September 5, 2010.

Mark and Linda Wilfong are dealing with a problem inside their home that you wouldn’t believe. The smell of natural gas infests the air and even their water after a water well was drilled on their property.

“We never thought, we just figured when they drilled we would have good drinking water. You never knew how important it was until you don’t have it,” says Linda Wilfong, homeowner.

The well was drilled back in June. And since then, the Wilfongs can’t cook or shower without bottled water. They have even had an increase in health problems.

“I’ve gone to the doctor with ear aches. I mean, the fumes are so bad. We were advised to not use our water and to find an alternative source for water. Where are we supposed to go or what are we supposed to do for water?” says Mark Wilfong, homeowner.

It just gets worse. Once you run the water, it even ignites. The Wilfongs have sent letters to different companies around the state pleading for help.

“I have done all the calling. Nobody has contacted us back. It’s just been ongoing ever since then,” says WIlfong.

Dominion Hope says they have recently been to the Wilfong’s to get samples.

“We dont know if it’s natural gas or not, until we see the results. There are gases that can be in the ground, and I don’t want to predispose the results. But it could be natural gas from another formation. Our formation where we store natural gas is about 2,000 feet. To my understanding, his water well was drilled at 180 feet,” says Dan Donavan, Director of Media Relations, Dominion Hope.

For now, the Wilfongs hope someone will give them the answers they deserve.

“You would think there would be state or government agencies out there to regulate this stuff. But, nobody is stepping up to do anything. They’re putting responsibility back on us and it’s not our fault. We did out part, we had our well drilled, we paid for it, and that was quite an expense. Now we have this,” says Wilfong.

Related Information :Gasland Documentary

By Kristin Keeling, WDTV, September 1, 2010.

As college students gear up once again to taste the sweet freedom of the college campus, there’s one thing they’re not likely not focusing on: the probability that one out of four female college students will be raped before receiving a diploma.

A recent study from the Department of Justice estimated that 25 percent of college women will be victims of rape or attempted rape before they graduate within a four-year college period, and that women between the ages of 16 to 24 will experience rape at a rate that’s four times higher than the assault rate of all women.

Such was seemingly the case of Megan Wright, a 19-year-old from New Jersey. Wright was wrapping up her freshman year in May 2006 at Dominican College, a small Catholic school in Orangeburg, N.Y., about an hour away from New York City, when she was allegedly gang raped on its campus. She committed suicide before the year ended.

Her mother, Cindy McGrath, is suing Dominican, claiming that the college failed to conduct a proper investigation into her daughter’s assault, and thereby violated Title IX of the Civil Rights Act, which guarantees equal access to education.

The lawsuit also alleges that Dominican violated the law by not accurately disclosing the number of sexual assaults reported on its campus.

Attorney Gloria Allred, who has represented parties in several high-profile discrimination cases, is representing McGrath.

“A victim who reports a sexual assault to a college, which is receiving federal funds, has a right to expect, under the law, that that college will conduct a fair, thorough investigation,” Allred said. “We take very seriously a college’s duty, and we want it enforced, and when they violate it there are real consequences.”

The Center for Public Integrity conducted a 12-month probe into sexual assault on college campuses that was completed earlier this year.

Why Rape Is Under-Reported

The investigation found that students will often keep quiet when they are sexually assaulted because they blame themselves for what happened, don’t realize that what happened to them was a crime or fear that their assailants or others will strike again if they report them.

According to court documents, McGrath said her daughter made all the right decisions a rape victim should make in her situation. She told someone, had a rape kit performed and reported the crime to college authorities, but to no avail, McGrath said.

The first person Wright told was school friend Kelly Rocco.

The night after the alleged attack occurred, “She said that there was blood in her underwear,” Rocco told “Nightline.” “We got up and went to the hospital by my house. She had a rape kit [performed] and her face was just in so much pain as they were doing everything.”

Wright then told her mother, who immediately rushed to the campus to be with her daughter.

“She broke down and said, ‘Mom, I’ve been raped. I’ve been raped,’” McGrath said.

Surveillance video in the hallway of the residence hall where Wright claimed the attack happened later showed a disoriented, seemingly impaired Wright being led in and out of a room by several different men, some of whom were identified as students by authorities.

The Center for Public Integrity concluded in its report that “students found ‘responsible’ for alleged sexual assaults on campuses often face little or no punishment,” and victims who do report these crimes run into “barriers” — from counselors worried about privacy to universities concerned about their public image.

Mother and daughter reported the incident to the resident adviser and then to the dean but received little in the way of a response, according to McGrath.

“The dean offered her no accommodations. [My daughter] left her math final crying. She couldn’t sit and take it,” McGrath said.

According to court documents, McGrath claimed her daughter tried to meet with the president of the college as well, but they are still waiting for a response to their request

Shortly after the alleged assault, Wright fell into a deep depression.

Megan Wright Committed Suicide After Alleged Attack

Terrified that her attackers were still roaming free on campus, Wright dropped out of Dominican that fall. Then, in December 2006, Wright told her mother she was going to her room to take a nap, and later McGrath found her daughter dead with a plastic bag over her head.

“I put my hand on something really warm, and it was a plastic bag, and it was her head in the plastic bag,” McGrath said through tears. “I started trying to give her mouth to mouth, and I kept trying to get her to wake up and I kept telling her, ‘Don’t go.’”

McGrath said that after her daughter’s suicide, the college never sent condolences, or even sent a representative to her funeral.

Dominican College provided a statement to “Nightline” through its lawyer, saying that campus officials did conduct their own investigation immediately after Wright reported the incident. They said they gave Wright contacts for counseling services and offer ed her an opportunity to delay her final exams.

The college also said that while it was deeply saddened by Wright’s death, it believes the court will find it acted appropriately.

Rape and Sexual Assault Resources — Steps to Take

If you are a college student and you believe you have been a victim of rape on campus, tell someone immediately.

Contact your local rape crisis center, victim advocacy legal organization or rape hotline to find out about your school’s procedures. Often these organizations can be found through your campus police department or health services. You should also go to the hospital or local health clinic and have a rape kit, through which physical evidence is gathered, performed.

Title IX of the Civil Rights Act grants the right to equal access to education. If you believe your school has violated Title IX, or has failed to offer “an equitable policy on sexual assault prevention and response,” you can file a complaint with the Office for Civil Rights of the Department of Education.

Parents Should Talk to Their Kids

The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism reported in 2009 that alcohol is a contributing factor in 97,000 cases of sexual assault or date rape each year.

By Cynthia McFadden, ABC News, September 6, 2010.

Watch the full story tonight on “Nightline” at 11:35 p.m. ET

The Dutchman charged with killing a 21-year-old Peruvian woman and suspected in the disappearance of U.S. teenager Natalee Holloway has acknowledged extorting money from Holloway’s parents and says he did it to get back at them.

In an interview published Monday, the Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf quoted Joran van der Sloot as confessing to taking money from the family of the American in return for revealing the location of her body. He was indicted in the U.S. in June for extortion after being caught in an FBI sting, though the place he indicated as her burial site turned out to be bogus.

Holloway was last seen alive with him on the Caribbean resort island of Aruba in 2005, and he has publicly said he killed her and then retracted his confession several times.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

“I wanted to get back at Natalee’s family – her parents have been making my life tough for five years,” the paper quoted him as saying from prison in Peru. “When they offered to pay for the girl’s location, I thought: ‘Why not’?”

U.S. prosecutors say in the sting earlier this year, Natalee’s mother sent $10,000 in cash to Van der Sloot through an FBI witness, and a wire transfer of $15,000 to Van der Sloot’s bank account in the Netherlands. He took the money and flew to Latin America.

He has been charged with killing Stephany Flores in his hotel room in Lima, Peru, on May 30 – 5 years to the day after Holloway’s disappearance. He met both women in casinos.

Van der Sloot initially confessed to killing Flores to Peruvian police, but later said he only did so because he was intimidated and had been promised he would be extradited to the Netherlands.

His requests to have the Peruvian confession retracted have so far been denied and he awaits trial.

From Associated Press, September 6, 2010. Video from MSNBC.

The Chinese Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) began the wide-ranging safety investigation in the wake of last month’s air crash in Yichun, in which 42 people died.

Combing through the pilot records of China’s major airlines, officials discovered over 200 pilots who had falsified their qualifications, in some cases fabricating their flight experience.

A number of the pilots have now been suspended until further notice, the state media reported. The CAA is also planning to introduce a compulsory new set of exams for all flight staff and technical crew.

At least half the pilots with fraudulent records worked for Shenzhen Airlines, the parent company of Henan Airlines, which was involved in the Yichun crash.

The crash, when a Brazilian-made regional jet missed the runway at a small airport in the northern province of Heilongjiang, was China’s first major air disaster for six years.

China Express Air, an airline based in Guizhou province, was ordered to suspend all operations on September 1 after a near-crash triggered safety concerns.

By Malcolm Moore in Shanghai, Daily Telegraph, September 6, 2010.

The dinner on September 29 had planned to gather “dozens” of China’s richest people together in order to support the Gates Foundation, which funds Aids charities in China among other projects.

But the organizers said that some of the invitations had been nervously declined. “After the invitations were sent out, a number of people called to query if they would be asked to donate at the function. So far, a small group has turned down the invitations,” said Ye Lei, the head of the foundation in China said.

Mr Gates, the founder of Microsoft, and Warren Buffett, who runs his own investment fund, announced in August they had already persuaded more than 40 billionaires in the United States to give half their fortune to charity.

That announcement had sent a ripple of panic among Chinese guests, explained a spokesman for the foundation. “This gala was originally supposed to be held in March. Then it was delayed and the timing of it, so soon after the announcement about the US donations, understandably made some of the Chinese concerned about being put in an awkward position,” he said.

The foundation said it is now planning to write letters to all the invitees to reassure them that the dinner is not a fund-raising event, but an opportunity to “get to know” each other. “We understand the US charity model will not suit China,” said the spokesman.

The charity would not confirm its guest list, or who had turned down the invitation but Zhang Xin, the chief executive of SOHO China, a property developer and Wang Chuanfu, the head of car and battery maker BYD and the richest man in China with a fortune of $5 Billion, were expected to attend.

Also expected are Duan Yongping, who spent $620,100 to have dinner with Mr Buffett in 2006, and Zhao Danyang, who spent $2.1 Million for the same honor in 2008.

China has the second-largest number of billionaires in the world, after the United States. Jin Jingping, a professor at Peking University, estimated that more than 60 per cent of Chinese entrepreneurs have also donated money to charity, but that they tend to shun publicity and attention.

“Compared to the US, some wealthy people in China seem more concerned about their family’s wellbeing. But that does not mean they are misers,” he said.

By Malcolm Moore in Shanghai, Daily Telegraph, September 6, 2010.

The Aomori District Court ruled that the activists, Junichi Sato and Toru Suzuki, will only have to serve one-year terms if they commit a crime in the next three years, Greenpeace said.

In a press conference after the verdict, Sato said Greenpeace would appeal the case. He said Monday’s sentence was “unfair” and “preventing the citizens’ right to know.”

Suzuki said in a statement that the sentence was disproportionate and undeserved.

“We set out to reveal the truth about the government’s whaling program, but instead have been punished, while those behind the misuse of public money walk free,” he said.

The case highlights rising tensions between anti-whaling activists and Japanese officials.

Japan’s whaling has drawn sharp criticism from environmental advocacy groups, who claim it involves the cruel slaughter of whales so that meat can be sold in markets and restaurants.

Japanese officials say their hunts are permitted under rules that prohibit commercial whaling but allow whaling for scientific reasons.

Greenpeace has said a tip led Sato and Suzuki to a whaling ship smuggling the whale meat onto the black market.

In a press conference, Sato announced that they had found 23 kilograms (50.7 lbs) of whale meat in a box they intercepted. He showed the whale meat in the box, and alleged a systematic, large-scale embezzlement within Japan’s whaling program.

Greenpeace delivered the whale meat to the Tokyo prosecutor’s office days later.

The police moved, but not on the Greenpeace allegations.

“They dropped the case and we are the ones who got arrested,” Sato said in an interview earlier this year.

Sato and Suzuki were arrested in June 2008 and charged with trespassing and theft. They faced up to 10 years behind bars.

Regardless of the reason, police said, it was theft because Greenpeace admitted that it intercepted the box.

Reaction outside of Japan was swift.

Protests were held around the world in support of the men, who came to be known as the “Tokyo Two.”

And a U.N. human rights body declared Japan’s trial of the men a violation of human rights.

Joji Morishita of the Japan Fisheries Agency has said the government recognizes the right of protest, but activists will be punished if they break Japan’s laws.

But Greenpeace International’s executive director, who traveled to Japan for the ruling, said Monday that the organization was determined to get the activists’ “unjust” conviction overturned.

“Activists are not criminals, and to treat them as such has a chilling effect in society, undermining the quality of democracy,” Executive Director Kumi Naidoo said in a statement after Monday’s ruling.

In July, a Japanese court found Peter Bethune, an environmental activist from New Zealand, guilty on five charges, ranging from assault against whalers to trespassing into a whaling vessel.

He was given a two-year suspended prison sentence and five years’ probation Wednesday by a Tokyo district court judge for throwing butyric acid at a whaling ship, jumping aboard and attempting to make a citizen’s arrest of the captain.

From Yoko Wakatsuki and Kyung Lah, CNN, September 6, 2010.

A leading pet product company has issued a voluntary recall of nearly 75,000 bags of dog treats due to salmonella concerns, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

The move by Hartz Mountain Corp. came after random sample testing by the FDA indicated the presence of salmonella organisms in one or more 8-ounce bags of Hartz Naturals Real Beef Treats for Dogs.

The company, based in Secaucus, New Jersey, has not received any reports of animals or people becoming ill as a result of contact with the treats, and is investigating the source of the potential contamination.

The potentially affected treats are stamped with the lot code BZ0969101E, according to the FDA.

Hartz is urging dog owners who have purchased the recalled treats to return them for a refund.

The FDA advises dog owners whose pets are exhibiting such symptoms as fever, diarrhea, abdominal pain and nausea to seek immediate veterinary assistance.

For more information : http://www.fda.gov/Safety/Recalls/ucm224987.htm

Consumers with questions regarding the recall should contact Hartz at
1-800-275-1414.

From FDA and CNN, September 3, 2010.

“We cannot allow the peace process to make no headway, progress to give way to failures, and tensions to follow relaxation,” Mubarak said in his speech in Cairo dedicated to the Muslim holiday of Laylat al-Qadr (Night of Determination).

Direct talks between Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu resumed on September 2 in Washington, after an almost two-year hiatus, with the two leaders expressing their readiness to search for a compromise to achieve long-awaited peace in the region.

Egypt is a key regional mediator in the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.
Mubarak said in his speech that the Palestinian people suffer not only from Israeli occupation, but also from continuing infighting between Palestinian political leaders.

The two largest Palestinian factions, Hamas and Fatah, split in June 2007, some 18 months after Hamas won Palestinian parliamentary elections in 2006. In the ensuing armed clashes between the two rival parties, Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip and pushed the ruling Fatah movement out of the enclave.

Hamas, which has refused to recognize Israel’s right to exist, has denounced the resumption of peace negotiations.

“Egypt is full of determination to continue efforts to revive the peace process and achieve the Palestinian unity,” Mubarak said.

Abbas and Netanyahu have pledged to complete negotiations on the core issues of the Middle East peace process within one year. These issues are settlement construction, the status of East Jerusalem, Israel’s demand for recognition as a Jewish state, the issue of Palestinian refugees and the final borders of a future Palestinian state.

During the meeting in Washington, the Israeli and Palestinian leaders agreed to maintain regular contacts, with the next round scheduled to take place on September 14 in the Egyptian resort city of Sharm El Sheikh.

Israeli-Palestinian direct peace talks came to a halt in December 2008, when Israel launched an attack on the Gaza Strip in a bid to put an end to the firing of homemade rockets at southern Israel by Palestinian militants based in the enclave. The conflict left 1,300 Palestinians and 13 Israelis dead.

From RIA Novosti, September 6, 2010.

Barak will arrive in the Russian capital on a two-day visit later on Monday.
“This agreement will regulate cooperation between the two countries in the military sphere in the next five years,” Irina Kovalchuk said.

The agreement stipulates that Russia and Israel will exchange experiences and information “in the spheres of mutual interest, including international security,” she said.

During the talks in Moscow, Serdyukov and Barak are going to discuss security issues in the Middle East and cooperation between Russia and Israel in fighting terrorism, she added.

The talks will take place less then two weeks after the Israeli Haaretz daily reported that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had asked his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, to stop the sale of advanced P-800 Yakhont supersonic cruise missiles to Syria.

Military-technical cooperation between Syria and Russia has always been an issue of criticism from Israeli authorities, who express a strong concern over the increase of Syrian defensive potential, but also see a threat of transferring weapons to Lebanese or Palestinian radicals.

Following the report, Kremlin aide Sergei Prikhodko said Russia stands by its international obligations and has no plans to stop the arms deal with Syria. Russia’s military cooperation policy is shaped by the president and is not directed against third countries, he said.

From RIA Novosti, September 6, 2010. Photo by Edward Pesov.

Kosuke Tsuneoka, 41, who had been missing in northern Afghanistan since April, has been under the protection of the Japanese embassy since Saturday, and was Monday travelling back to Japan via Dubai.

Tsuneoka, who has covered conflicts in Iraq, Georgia, Chechnya, Ethiopia and other hotspots, said in a Twitter message that “the culprits are not Taliban. They were a corrupt military faction.” “They blackmailed the Japanese government, pretending they were Taliban,” he said in a post on micro-blogging site Twitter.

He said he feared he would be killed to ensure his silence.

Earlier reports said Tsuneoka’s kidnappers had demanded the release of imprisoned comrades, and that Taliban militants had also claimed responsibility and demanded the Afghan government pay a ransom for the journalist.

Japanese media had reported on ongoing negotiations over a payment of several hundred thousand dollars for Tsuneoka’s release.

However, Japan’s top government spokesman, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshito Sengoku, said Monday:

“The Japanese government and the family of the kidnap victim did not pay a ransom to the culprits.” Criminal groups and Taliban insurgents have kidnapped several dozen foreigners, many of them journalists, since the 2001 US-led invasion that ousted the Taliban regime in Kabul and sparked the current insurgency.

From AFP, September 6, 2010.

An official said the death toll could rise as the police station had collapsed after the blast and workers were trying to rescue people trapped in the debris.

The attack took place in the town of Lakki Marwat.

“Nine policemen and eight civilians were killed,” police official Asghar Islam told Reuters by telephone.

Another police official said some children were also among dead as the bomber also struck a school van before hitting the rear wall of the police station.

He said 34 people, including 20 policemen, were wounded.

From Reuters, September 6, 2010.

At least 12 people, including four soldiers, have been killed and 29 others wounded after five suicide bombers armed with rifles attempted to storm an army base in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad.

Sunday’s attack came less than a week after Washington declared US combat operations in Iraq over.

Two attackers blew themselves up at the back gate of the compound after being shot, while a third detonated a minibus packed with explosives at the entrance.

The remaining two fought an hour-long gunbattle with troops before being killed, Major-General Qassim al-Moussawi, a Baghdad security spokesman, said.

“It was similar to the attack on the central bank but security forces foiled the assault and killed all attackers,” al-Moussawi said, referring to the June 13 siege by up to seven suicide bombers of the Central Bank of Iraq.

All five of the attackers involved in Sunday’s assault on the military base were wearing suicide vests, said al-Moussawi, and arrived at the back gate of the military base in a minibus.

‘Bodies and body parts’

“There are bodies and body parts but we don’t know if they belong to attackers or civilians,” al-Moussawi said.

The US military said its troops opened fire and provided air support for Iraqi forces during the gunbattle. US forces are no longer officially on a combat mission in Iraq, but nearly 50,000 remain to train and assist the Iraqi military.

US military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Eric Bloom said US troops provided “suppressive fire” during the attack, as well as support through helicopters and drones. US explosives experts were also brought in to examine the site.

The assault took place in broad daylight, just over two weeks after dozens of Iraqi army recruits and soldiers were killed by another suicide bomber at the same base.

The base in the the Bab al-Muadham neighbourhood was a defence ministry headquarters under Saddam Hussein, Iraqi’s former president, and now serves as an army recruitment centre as well as a military command centre.

Iraqi fighters are targeting police and troops as the US military gradually pulls out more than seven years after the invasion.

Residents of the Bab al-Muadham neighborhood reported heavy shooting after the explosions and said the gunfire continued for over an hour.

The area became an al-Qaeda stronghold at the height of the sectarian warfare unleashed after the 2003 US-led invasion, and remained dangerous until mid-2009.

US leaders said last week that the Iraq war was in its final stages and that Iraqi security forces are capable of countering violence in the country, but many Iraqis do not believe their army and police are ready for the task.

From Al Jazeera and AFP, September 5, 2010. Photo from AFP.

The decision, taken on Monday after 12 hours of talks between senior politicians in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s centre-right coalition, means that some of the 17 plants will now be operational until the 2030s.

Norbert Roettgen, the environment minister, said after the meeting in Berlin that the lifespans of Germany’s nuclear power stations would be extended by 12 years on average.

“We’ve agreed that older nuclear plants will receive an extension of eight years, and newer ones operating with different technical standards will get a 14-year extension,” he said.

He said nuclear utilities would have to pay part of their extra profits boosted from the extension to develop renewable energy.

The debate has also pitted nuclear power-plant operators against environmentalists, about 1,000 of whom staged a protest outside the chancellery where the meeting was held.

Energy strategy

The agreement is set to be the cornerstone of Merkel’s broader energy strategy which will be decided later this month.

Merkel’s predecessor, Gerhard Schroeder, had decided to mothball the reactors by around 2020.

Merkel wanted to postpone the shutdown as part of a new “energy concept” for the country due to go before her cabinet on September 28.

The decision was criticised by Greenpeace and other environmental groups as well as Germany’s Green Party.

Merkel calls the extension a “bridge” until renewable sources of energy such as wind and solar power can produce more of Germany’s power as it seeks to reduce dependence on coal.

The meeting also set down some of the specifics of a separate nuclear fuel element tax intended to raise $3.1 Billion a year.

They discussed how to make energy companies such as RWE, Vattenfall and E.ON pay for the extension of their plants and ensure a greater contribution to Germany’s energy output from renewable sources.

Quid pro quo

As part of an 80bn-euro austerity programme for the period 2011 to 2014, Germany wanted to tap energy firms, a quid pro quo for keeping their plants open for longer.

The nuclear extension deal faced immediate criticism from the opposition Social Democrats (SPD), who said they planned a legal challenge if Merkel’s cabinet attempted to pass it into law without approval of the upper house of parliament.

The SPD said  it would reverse any extension of the nuclear plants’ lifespans if the party returned to power.

Support for Merkel’s coalition has fallen in recent opinion polls and surveys suggested a majority of Germans opposed the idea of postponing the date that the country goes nuclear-free.

From Al Jazeera and Agencies, September 6, 2010. Photo from AFP.

The British newspaper interviewed a “Taliban treasurer” who said a Kabul-based Iranian company has paid him more than $77,000 in the last six months for attacks to sabotage U.S. troops.

That includes $18,000 for a July attack in which an American armored car was damaged and several Afghan government troops were killed.

During the course of its investigation, the newspaper reports it uncovered at least five Iranian companies in Kabul making similar payments to the Taliban.

The “treasurer,” who remained anonymous, told Times reporter Miles Amoore that he collects the funds and delivers them to Taliban fighters.

“I have to sign off on all the receipts and I have to add up how much each fighter deserves after each operation. I also have to communicate in the Iranian language,” he said.

In addition to paying $1,000 per head for every American soldier killed by the Taliban, he said Iran also rewards each successful attack on a U.S. military vehicle with $6,000.

An illiterate farmer who was taught to read, write, and do basic math by the Taliban last year, the man described the Taliban’s relationship with Iran as a “marriage of convenience.”

He says the terrorist group is happy to accept funds from Iran, but the partnership is by no means exclusive.

“We don’t care who we get money from,” he told the Times.

Nevertheless, he says Iran has a vested interest in continuing to support Taliban operations.

“Iran will never stop funding us because Americans are dangerous for them as well,” the man told Amoore. “I think the hatred is the same from both us and Iran. The money we get is not dirty. It is for jihad.”

Despite criticism that leaving Afghanistan will embolden the Taliban, President Obama has stayed firm to his announcement that the U.S. will began withdrawing its combat troops next summer.

By Meena Hartenstein, NY Daily News, September 5, 2010; The Sunday Times.

Shoya Tomizawa, 19, was travelling at full speed when he fell off on a corner and was hit violently by the bikes of Alex De Angelis and Scott Redding, who both also tumbled but looked relatively unhurt.

Suter rider Tomizawa had completed 15 laps of the Misano circuit before his crash in dry conditions.

He was immediately taken to hospital, where he died from his injuries at 2.20pm local time.

Dr Claudio Costa, part of the motorcycling world championship’s medical team, told reporters the news.

Riders in the premier MotoGP class were also informed after their race.
World champion Valentino Rossi said: ‘I found out now, when things like this happen nothing else matters. He was a lovely guy. It was a horrible accident.’

Tomizawa, who started pocket bike racing at the age of just three in 1994, has previously ridden in the 125cc class.

He won earlier this season in Qatar and was seventh in the overall standings.

The Moto2 race continued, and was won by Spain’s Toni Elias.

Spain’s Dani Pedrosa later won the MotoGP, but admitted he was in no mood to celebrate following the tragic news.

‘Now my head is away from the race. There are no words,’ he said.
‘For the race everything was perfect but now I’m totally shocked.’

From the Daily Mail, September 5, 2010.

Photos by AFP/Getty, EPA, AP.

Iran has reportedly sentenced Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani – the 43-year-old Iranian woman who faces execution after being convicted of adultery – to 99 lashes in prison for “spreading corruption and indecency” after allowing an unveiled picture of herself to be published in a British newspaper.

The claim, which could not be confirmed, comes from her family and a lawyer representing Mohammadi Ashtiani, based on reports from those who have recently left the prison in Tabriz where she has been held for the last four years.

The latest charges against Mohammadi Ashtiani – if confirmed – would appear to suggest that the Iranian authorities have been stung by the international outcry her case has attracted through the campaign of her family and supporters in the media, and could be read as a warning that it is Sakineh who could suffer from the protests.

What has made the latest charges against her even more extraordinary is the fact that the unveiled photograph in question, published by the Times newspaper on 28 August, was not actually of Sakineh but of another woman, for which the paper has since apologised.

In reality, the woman pictured was Susan Hejrat, an Iranian political activist living in Sweden whose photograph had been published on a website along with an article she had written about Sakineh’s case, perhaps causing the confusion. In its apology, published on Friday, the Times said that the photograph had been obtained from Mohammad Mostafaei, one of Sakineh’s lawyers, who had claimed that he received the picture from her son, Sajad – which he has denied.

Instead, in an open letter today, Sajad Ghaderzadeh accused the Iranian authorities of using the mistaken picture as “an excuse to increase their harassment of our mother”.

He added: “My mother has been called in to see the judge in charge of prison misdemeanours, and he has sentenced our helpless mother to 99 lashes on false charges of spreading corruption and indecency by disseminating this picture of a woman presumed to be her [Sakineh] without hijab.”

Speaking to the Observer today, Sajad said: “This news reached us through some prisoners who were released from Tabriz prison recently and have informed my mother’s lawyer, Houtan Kian, that she has been given a sentence of 99 lashes for the alleged unveiled photo of her published in western media.

“As far as we know, the sentence of 99 lashes has not been administered yet. Once I got the Times apology for the misidentified photo, I instantly informed the lawyer and we are going to ask for an appeal. My mother has been denied visits for the past two weeks, no one has been allowed to visit her, including her family and even her lawyer. She has also been denied access to a phone and we have been completely cut off from her.”

News of the latest punishment came amid reports from the family that they had learned her case has been referred for a judicial review to Branch 9 of Iran’s supreme court which has requested police documents relating to her case, some of which appear to have gone missing. The reports have also emerged amid an increasingly bitter war of words between Iran and Sakineh’s most high-profile supporter, Carla Bruni, the wife of France’s president, Nicolas Sarkozy, who was described as a “prostitute” in one Iranian newspaper unhappy with her intervention.

Mohammadi Ashtiani was first convicted in 2006 of having an “illicit relationship” with two men after the death of her husband and was sentenced by a court to 99 lashes. Later that year she was also convicted of adultery and sentenced to be stoned to death, even though she retracted a confession that she claims was made under duress. Iran lifted that sentence last month, but now says that she has been convicted of involvement in her husband’s killing.

According to the Iranian courts, her husband, Ebrahim Qaderzadeh, 44, was found dead on his bathroom floor in Meshkinshahr, in north-west Iran. Mohammadi Ashtiani is said by Iranian officials to have confessed to having had an extramarital affair with the killer, Eisa Taheri, and to have said that she had seduced him. The judiciary has also claimed that she confessed to having planned the murder in collaboration with Taheri, claims that are vigorously denied by her family.

Last month she was presented on Iranian state television where she “confessed” to involvement in the murder of her husband in a television interview recorded in Tabriz prison, where she is being held. It was suggested at that time that the 43-year-old had been tortured for two days before the recording of the confession.

Sajad also appealed to Mohammad Mostafaei not to make any more comments either on his mother’s case or on his father’s death.

Since her case has captured world attention, Iranian officials have claimed she was an accomplice to the murder of her husband, although her government-appointed lawyer, Houtan Kian, has accused the government of inventing charges against her.

Sajad has said the only reason his mother is still alive is because of the international campaign for her release.

By Saeed Kamali Dehghan and Peter Beaumont, The Guardian, September 4, 2010. Photograph: Fabio Campana/EPA

Timeline

2006 Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani lashed 99 times for “adultery” in

Iran, charges she denies

November 2008 she is sentenced to death by stoning for the same offense due to process called “judicial wisdom”

July 2010 Protests begin about her fate

July 12th Iran says the stoning sentence is not for adultery but for the murder of her husband

August in a confession on state TV – which many believe to be forced – she confesses to complicity in her husband’s murder

September 3rd News emerges she has been sentenced to 99 additional lashes for allowing the dissemination of a picture purportedly of her (although of another woman) not wearing the hijab

Two boats capsized over the weekend in separate incidents on Congo’s rivers, leaving at least 270 people feared dead, and both vessels were operating with few safety measures, officials said.

Early on Saturday, a boat on a river in northwest Equateur province hit a rock and capsized, provincial spokeswoman Ebale Engumba said. She said more than 70 people were believed dead among 100 estimated passengers.

In a separate incident in Kasai Occidental province, 200 people were feared dead after a boat loaded with passengers and fuel drums caught fire and capsized in southern Congo. The incident in southern Congo would be the deadliest boat accident in the Central African nation this year, and among the worst in Africa this year.

The boats that traverse Congo’s rivers are often in poor repair and filled beyond capacity. The industry is not well-regulated and boat operators are known to fill boats to dangerous levels.

In the first incident in northwest Congo, Engumba said officials think the boat’s lack of lighting was responsible.”We are going to arrest people involved who are in charge of regulating the boat’s movement who failed to stop that boat from traveling at night,” she said.

Fabrice Muamba, who said he was on the boat when it caught fire Saturday night on the Kasai River, said he thought only 15 of the more than 200 people he thought were aboard were able to swim to safety. He said passengers began to jump overboard when the engine caught fire as it passed the remote village of Mbendayi, some 45 miles (70 kilometers) from the town of Tshikapa, which is north of Congo’s border with Angola.

Another survivor, a woman named Romaine Mishondo, said the boat was already packed with “hundreds” of passengers when it stopped some 10 minutes before the fire to pick up more people.

She said she did not know exactly how many people were aboard, but said the boat was so crowded it reminded her of “a whole market in the village full of people.”

But when the fire started and people began jumping overboard, she said nearby fishermen ignored drowning passengers’ pleas for help.

“Fishermen attacked the boat and started beating passengers with paddles as they were (trying) to loot goods,” she said. “The fishermen refused to save passengers, instead taking goods into their pirogues. … I survived because I hung onto a jerrycan until another vessel passed by the scene and rescued us.”

From Associated Press in Kinshasa, September 5, 2010.

Cha Sa-soon, 69, whose surname coincidentally means “vehicle” in Korean, is now appearing in a prime-time advertisement for Hyundai, Korea’s largest carmaker.

For three years beginning in April 2005, she took her driving test once a day, five days a week. After that, her pace slowed, to around twice a week.

“When she finally got her licence, we all went out cheering and hugged her, giving her flowers,” said Park Su-yeon, an instructor at Jeonbuk Driving School.

He said that Mrs Cha would not be a danger, since it was on the written part of the test, rather than the practical side, that she had failed so many times.

“I wanted to get a driver’s licence so I could take my grandchildren to the zoo,” Mrs Cha explained.

By Malcolm Moore in Shanghai, Daily Telegraph, September 5, 2010.

In the wake of France’s controversial repatriation of Romanian Gypsies last month, Italian police backed by bulldozers will raze rudimentary camps in Rome built beneath flyovers and in wasteland, often by Romanian migrants.

Rome’s mayor, Gianni Alemanno, has cited the recent death of a Romanian child during a fire in one of the camps as an incentive for their demolition. “These are the terrible risks and dramas of the illegal camps that have existed in Rome for too long,” he said.

Sveva Belviso, Alemanno’s social policy assessor, said fewer than 1,000 people people were due to be evicted. “We will offer assistance to the young, old and sick,” she said.

But the Red Cross warned that many more faced sleeping rough and losing their possessions.

“The number is in fact likely to be over 1,000 and with the city’s financial straits and overflowing accommodation I wonder where they will put up and feed these people,” said Mario Squicciarini. “What is worse is that when the bulldozers go in they often do not give you time to get your possessions out.”

Puscia, 30, a Romanian mother who has lived at an illegal camp on Via Magliano Vecchia for two years, said she would lose her job as a school cook if her home was knocked down.

“Including my two kids, there are 100 children at this camp who go to school, so people here are really anxious,” she said.

“If they demolish the camp I would be ashamed to live like a rat and would probably go back to Romania,” she added.

Rome is launching its crackdown as it prepares 12 new and refurbished official camps on the outskirts of the city which officials claim will host 6,000 of the 7,000 Gypsies now living in Rome. About 2,500 of those are of Bosnian origin, 2,000 Romanian and only around 500 Italian, said Belviso.

“Twenty per cent of the adults have records for crimes like drug dealing, possession of arms, rape and armed robbery and we are pushing for their expulsion,” she said.

Italian interior minister Roberto Maroni has said he is also pushing the EU for permission to expel any law-abiding EU citizens, including Gypsies, who do not have work or accommodation and who are claiming benefit.

He has backed France’s crackdown on Gypsies, stating that Nicolas Sarkozy was “doing nothing more than copying Italy”.

Alemanno, a former neo-fascist, has said voluntary repatriation for Gypsies had been tried “and has not solved the problem.” Gypsies leaving France were now settling in camps in Rome, he said last week.

By Tom Kington in Rome, The Guardian, September 5, 2010.

Félix survived his ordeal at the hands of the Zeta cartel, one of Mexico’s most ruthless drugs gangs. But he knows of many fellow migrants who suffered the same grisly fate as the 72 who were shot at an isolated ranch 70 miles from the border city of Reynosa.

“There are lots more dead migrants, they just haven’t found them,” says the 20-year-old Honduran, speaking at a shelter for migrants run by nuns in Reynosa.

Unlike those at the ranch who were travelling in one large group and kidnapped by an armed commando, Félix (whose name has been changed) was alone when he was picked up by a policeman. In an example of the official collusion that human rights activists have long claimed endangers migrants in Mexico, the officer took him to a Zeta safe house and left him there.

For a week he was a side-show for gunmen who beat him with planks and pistol handles and gave him electric shocks to intensify his screams when they put him on the phone to his poverty-stricken family, demanding money for his release. The rest of the time, he says, he was forced to watch his captors going about the more serious business of torturing information out of captured members of the Gulf cartel by cutting off different pieces of their bodies each day for about a week. Then they were killed, their mutilated bodies burnt to dust on the mountainside.

“They told me the same thing would happen to me, if the ransom didn’t arrive,” he says.

Félix’s father in Honduras and brother in Atlanta managed to raised $5,000 and wired it to Mexico. The Zetas demanded as much again and his family stopped answering the phone.

During his two-month ordeal Félix says he was moved to six different safe houses. In one he was crammed into a swelteringly hot small room with 80 other migrants. In another there were 120. Every day they were taken out individually to be beaten.

“Sometimes I couldn’t think of anything because of the pain,” Félix says. “Other times I would just sit there wondering how people could be that bad.” Every week, he says, about five migrants whose families had paid nothing were taken away. He assumes they were killed and their bodies destroyed.

He was offered his life in exchange for 12 weeks’ intensive training in the use of heavy weapons in a jungle camp and a monthly salary of $5,000. After that, his captors said, he would be a member of the cartel with money to burn. Desperation prompted him to ask if he would be allowed to see his family again, but they said no: “They told me that the only way out of being a Zeta was death or jail.”

Amazingly, he was spared. Dumped in Reynosa unable to walk and with his face so swollen he could hardly talk, somebody took him to the shelter. That was five months ago. Now he no longer vomits blood and his bruises have faded but he lives in limbo. He is reluctant to get himself deported to Honduras, where he feels he has no future, but too scared to try to cross illegally the US border, even if he had the money to pay a smuggler to show him the way. Many smugglers are linked to the cartels.

He doesn’t dare go out into the streets of Reynosa, because he is terrified of roaming kidnappers and the battles that periodically break out on the streets between the Zetas, the Gulf cartel and the military. In April, gunmen with “Gulf cartel” printed on their bulletproof jackets broke into the building where Félix is staying and lined everybody up against the wall. When they didn’t find who they were looking for they left.

Sister Ligia, one of the nuns at the shelter loses her habitual sprightliness for a moment: “That massacre at the ranch. That’s just the tip of the iceberg.”

By Jo Tuckman in Reynosa, Mexico; The Observer, September 5, 2010.

Via RealEstalker : We wrote about Candy Spelling’s magnificent manor last year, when she first announced that she was selling it for a whopping $150 Million – and that she was willing to wait instead of lowering the asking price. True to her word, the Spelling Manor officially hit the open market yesterday with the original asking price.

The home has 56,500 square feet of living space on a 4.69 acre lot. In addition to the fourteen bedrooms and twenty-seven bathrooms, the manor also boasts a billiards room, bowling alley, arcade room, flower cutting room, pool, tennis courts, and servants quarters.

Photos via the MLS listing.

The armed Basque separatist group ETA today announced a ceasefire, raising hopes of a new peace process with the Spanish government but giving few clues about how that might happen.

The announcement was made in a video showing three masked Eta militants sitting behind a table with the group’s axe and snake symbol behind them.

“ETA announces that it took the decision several months ago not to carry out armed actions,” one of the militants, a woman, said.

The group has killed more than 800 people in a 50-year campaign for an independent state made up four Spanish provinces and part of south-west France.

The masked figures in the video said ETA wished “to reach a scenario for a democratic process”, but failed to indicate whether the ceasefire would be temporary or permanent.

The message also made no mention of either giving up arms or an international verification process – something experts have said would be key to any future peace process.

There was no immediate reaction from Spain’s socialist government, which was expected to make a public reply.

The ETA announcement comes after six months in which the group has not killed anyone.

The last killing carried out by ETA – classed as a terrorist organisation by the EU and the US – was of a French police officer who discovered members stealing cars from a dealership outside Paris in March.

The last fatal attack in Spain saw two police officers killed on the holiday island of Majorca in July 2009.

It is not the first time ETA has unilaterally declared a ceasefire. The last ceasefire, which it described as “permanent”, was announced in March 2006 and saw prime minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero’s government enter into talks with the group.

However, those talks were effectively brought to an end by a bomb that killed two Ecuadorian immigrants at Madrid’s Barajas airport nine months later.

Zapatero had said, the day before the blast, that he was optimistic about the process.

The bombing was seen as proof that an internal battle between the hawks and doves in ETA had been won by the former.

By Giles Tremlett in Madrid, The Guardian, September 5, 2010.

The majority of Americans — including New Yorkers — oppose the construction of an Islamic cultural center near the former site of the World Trade Center. In towns across the country, the voices of those who don’t want mosques built in their neighborhoods are growing louder.

The open expressions of hostility have become so loud in recent months, that a coalition of Muslim groups is taking steps to remind people that American Muslims are Americans — the same as anyone else.

This week, they launched an online video campaign called “My Faith, My Voice” — and the message is simple:

“I’m an American. I’m a Muslim. This is my faith. This is my voice.”

In his Sunday column, New York Times writer Nicholas Kristof points out that in 1940, 17 percent of the population considered Jews to be a “menace to America.” Almost every ethnic group in this country has gone through a period of transition when they had to fight to prove that, indeed, they were Americans. Now, it seems Muslim Americans have do the same today.

Fear Of An Islamic Takeover

Rabiah Ahmed, one of the creators of the online video, tells NPR’s Guy Raz the video is intended to counter the fears Muslims hear from their fellow Americans.

“Many of the arguments that are made in opposition to the mosque have to do with the fear that Muslims are trying to impose their faith on Americans or are ignoring sensitivities of Americans,” Ahmed says.

“When we hear these things, we want to just reach out and say, ‘Look, if that’s what you’re worried about, you don’t have anything to worry about,’ ” she says. “That’s not who we are, and that’s not what we’re about.”

It’s sad that it has to be said, Ahmed acknowledges, but it’s necessary. “This rhetoric, these anti-Muslim feelings, they’re not just coming from the usual right-wing or agenda-driven circles. Polls indicate these fears are widespread. They’re in the hearts of average Americans — moderate Americans.” And those feelings seem stronger than ever.

That’s not necessarily so, says Edward Curtis of Indiana University-Purdue University in Indianapolis. He wrote Muslims in America: A Short History, and says the anti-Muslim sentiment in America goes back to the days of the Puritans.

A History Of Anti-Muslim Sentiment

“Cotton Mather thought that Muslims were a sign of a Christian schism,” Curtis says. The New England minister, known for his role in the Salem witch trials, saw the Prophet Muhammad as the Antichrist.

“That kind of misunderstanding or negative view of Islam has been with us always,” says Curtis. “It’s kind of come and gone in cycles.”

Curtis points out that it’s only relatively recently that the face of Islam in America has been associated with Middle Easterners or South Asians. The first Muslims in America were actually slaves from West Africa, and African-Americans are still the largest group of Muslims in the nation, even today.

Through much of that history, Islam was associated mostly with civil rights and black subversive movements, he says. Considering the rhetoric of those eras, today’s expressions of anti-Muslim sentiment aren’t quite so singular.

“It’s really hard to compete with Cotton Mather and some of the Protestant evangelicals of the 1820s and ’30s,” says Curtis. “In terms of that viciousness, I don’t think that it’s gotten any worse since then.”

“But,” he says, “I would say that until there was a significant population of Muslims here … that kind of prejudice didn’t lead into discrimination and hate crimes until really pretty recently.”

Reaching Out

Perhaps most alarming is that in a country where religious tolerance is venerated — even held up as an example to a world where that isn’t always the case — the level of hostility toward the idea of building a mosque in a specific location is so pronounced.

“In the post 9/11 climate, there was anti-Muslim backlash, but it wasn’t so open. It wasn’t so hostile. It wasn’t so widespread,” Ahmed says. “Whatever the Muslim community has been doing in the last 10 years, it’s been a good effort. But for some reason, it’s not achieving its goal.”

In 2001, Ahmed says, she mostly only saw the impact of anti-Muslim sentiment on her own life. Ten years later, she has two children and new concerns. “I’m worried about the environment that they’re going to be raised in and how they’re going to be perceived by their peers.”

She hopes the current turmoil is a passing storm, she says, “but it’s not going to happen by itself.”

“The Muslim community is going to really have to reach out in different ways,” she says. “If it’s not done, then there’s a potential of it just getting worse.”

Listen to All Things Considered from NPR:

http://www.npr.org/player/v2/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=129668035&m=129668952

Visit the My Faith My Voice website:

http://myfaithmyvoice.com/index.php

From National Public Radio, September 5, 2010.

Ernesto Anaya

On his debut CD, Ernesto Anaya offers a multifaceted interpretation of classic Mexican huapangos, as well as special arrangements of lesser-known huapango songs. The album offers a close-up look at this popular music style and its roots, and gives listeners a glimpse at the genre’s musical diversity.

Eugenia Leon

Eugenia Leon began her career in the 1970s, singing in groups that reflected anxiety toward the Mexican establishment during difficult times, but it wouldn’t be long until she became a vocal star in her own right. In 1982, she made a name for herself as a soloist, with a repertoire that included compositions by young Mexican composers and reflected Brazilian and bolero influences.

Chavela Vargas

“I’m not afraid of anything,” Chavela Vargas said when, at 90, she asked Discos Corasón to coproduce this album with her. This living legend, who needs no introduction to Latin music followers — and who might bring to mind Edith Piaf for newcomers to this music — insisted upon two conditions before making this record.

The first was that she should have artistic direction, deciding what to record and with whom to work. The second condition was that she should receive all funds from the sales of her records, including digital. “This will be ‘my’ record,” she said. “I have made so many records, but none of them are mine.”

Banda Regional Mixe

Banda Regional Mixe is an ensemble of musicians from the Mixe Mountains of Oaxaca. The group’s latest recording is built around new compositions based on the traditional music of Oaxaca, along with new improvisational pieces in collaboration with the renowned American avant-garde musician Steve Brown.

The 16-piece band is directed by Leovigildo Martinez, and most of its members are young men and women, representing their rich cultural heritage as well as their potential for creating new musical landscapes. Their new compositions mix timeless sounds with new arrangements, establishing the new recording somewhere between the traditional music scene and the new avant-garde.

From National Public Radio, September 5, 2010.

“She looks like she’d be dancing on Soul Train in 1975,” says Stephanie Williams, music director of the Tom Joyner Morning Show. Williams is talking about the cover of James’ latest CD, where James has white, over-the-knee boots on, and bigger hair than Chaka Khan ever had. Williams says James sounds like one of the singers that she used to see in smoky clubs in Memphis when she was growing up.

“Her voice has wisdom to it,” says Williams. “It’s like her voice has lived a life that she has yet to live.”

This kind of neo-soul is not exactly the stuff radio hits are made of these days, so support from the Tom Joyner Morning Show was a major boost to James’ career. Joyner reaches about 8 million people daily, and it’s an older crowd. Williams says the show’s “urban adult contemporary” format is right for artists like James.

“They have to come over the grown-folks side a lot of times, to the urban AC side where they can get the exposure they need,” Williams says. “Grown people can listen to grown people’s music without the hip-hop and the things we have out there now on our kids’ iPods.”

Selling Your Soul

James says most of the rest of the people in the music business haven’t known what to do with her. In 2005, she was signed to Warner Bros., a major label. It started out well; her first CD was a tribute to some of the soul stars of the 1960s and ’70s. But being on a major label didn’t turn out to be the triumph that James hoped it would.

“We can’t go back to yesterday,” says James. “But can’t we just put the thongs away?”

For many artists, being on a major label would represent a triumph. But for James, it didn’t turn out that way.

“They didn’t really know what to do with me. I’m a soul singer, a black artist,” she says. “Warner wasn’t really known for doing that kind of music … You don’t have to be buck naked to sell your soul, to sell your record.”

James’ new CD is on Stax, a smaller label that was once home to soul icons such as The Staple Singers and Otis Redding.

“Stax, being that it’s a legendary soul label, the whole process of recording the album in itself was smooth sailing,” James says. “They get it. They get a soul voice.”

Stax has been mostly dormant since the early 1980s — until the Concord Music Group bought the label in 2004 and relaunched it. A spokesperson for the company said Stax would like to help artists develop their careers rather than chase hit-driven radio formats.

But James says she’d be just fine with a radio hit. And here’s another challenge for a soul artist in the 21st century: It’s hard to top those great songs from the 1960s and ’70s.

“You take an Al Green record, or something by Marvin Gaye … when you hear those timeless records, there’s not too much that can compare to that kind of stuff,” James says.

By Elizabeth Blair, National Public Radio, September 5, 2010.

Behind it lay a man in his mid-50s, stark naked. He appeared to have been beaten and had red ant bites on his body.

Employees at the Burger King called the police and reported a vagrant passed out behind the restaurant. An ambulance took him to a nearby hospital.

He didn’t know his last name. Still doesn’t. One of the few things he did remember was his first name: Benjaman. But he didn’t know where he was from, how he got to Georgia, or why he woke up there naked and unconscious behind a Burger King dumpster.

“I remember them coming into the room — the ward clerks — and they were screaming at me, telling me they had to give me a last name,” Benjaman tells NPR’s Guy Raz. “They weren’t polite about it at all.”

“They were calling me ‘BK Doe,’ ” he says. Burger King Doe. “The only thing I could think of that started with a ‘K’ was Kyle. So I just picked that as my last name. Benjaman Kyle.”

Building A New Life — With Few Memories Of The Old

Benjaman — he’s convinced of the unique spelling — had cataracts in both eyes when he woke up, which may have been from prolonged exposure to the sun. He was bounced around to hospitals and homeless shelters for nine months, unable to see more than a few feet in front of him, until a charity raised enough money to have his eyes fixed.

He eventually became a resident manager at the same homeless shelter where he once stayed. There, a nurse named Katherine Slater noticed his hard work ethic and good nature. She became curious about him.

“The stories went around that this man has amnesia,” she says. “And how many people do you know who have amnesia? It’s just so unique.”

After they became friends, Katherine found that while Benjaman had no past and no family, he hadn’t made much of an effort to find one. He couldn’t remember his Social Security number, so he couldn’t get a job or a photo ID. He couldn’t even get a library card.

“I guess I just accepted the fact that that’s the way it’s going to be and that’s the way it was, so I just got on with it,” he says.

He had only a handful of vague memories of the Denver area in the 1970s and ’80s, along with what he thinks are childhood memories of Indianapolis.

Katherine encouraged him to contact a local senator, who got the FBI involved. They ran his fingerprints.

“Just to give you a perspective,” special agent Bill Kirkconnell says, “there’s more than 60 million criminal prints on file and more than 200 million civil prints on file. I thought there was an excellent chance that maybe Benjaman had a criminal history, but even if he did not — given his age — he might have served in the military or worked for the federal government. Those results came back negative.”

Benjaman has tried hypnosis, DNA tests and facial recognition software. He’s not in any missing persons’ databases. He’s been covered by newspapers and television stations nationally and internationally. He turns up nowhere.

Some Day, Maybe He’ll Remember

“After six years, all the obvious research or investigative things that can be done have been done. I don’t think they’re going to find it out that way. I think the only way I’m going to discover it is if my memories come back myself.”

He says he doesn’t wonder what his family might be like, if they’re out there.

“I think eventually the memories will come back. At that point, I’ll have to deal with it.”

For now, he’s supported mostly by Katherine Slater and an income of $50 to $100 a month he earns by doing yardwork. He knows some people think his story is a hoax, and admits it’s hard to believe.

“What am I getting out of it?” he says. “Certainly no money or anything.”

In fact, he says he doesn’t mention the subject to most people. “You bring it up to someone you’ve never met before and they kind of back away. But after I meet people and talk to them for a while, it works out.”

If you think you may know Benjaman, contact FBI Special Agent Bill Kirkconnell at 912-232-3716 or e-mail forensic genealogist Colleen Fitzpatrick at colleen@identifinders.com.

From NPR, September 5, 2010.

Discrimination against women and girls takes a staggering toll around the world, says author Sheryl WuDunn. It leads to as many as 100 million fewer females than males in the world.

Ending the oppression of women is the great moral challenge of the 21st Century, a cause she compares to fighting slavery in the 19th century and totalitarianism in the 20th Century.

WuDunn, a former reporter for The New York Times who is now an investment banker, and her husband, Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, wrote “Half the Sky,” a book focusing on the role of women in the world.

She spoke about their findings at the TED Global conference in Oxford in July and in an interview with CNN.

During their time as correspondents in China, WuDunn and Kristof learned of the phenomenon of an estimated 30 million “missing” baby girls in the nation.

WuDunn says part of the gap could be attributed to infanticide by families who were determined to have a male child under China’s one-child policy and in part to the development of the sonogram. That medical device can be used to determine the gender of a child before birth, prompting some parents to obtain abortions.

“One peasant in the southern part of China once told us, ‘The sonogram’s great, we don’t need to have baby girls any more.’

The problem is not limited to China; WuDunn says there are between 60 million and 100 million missing females in the world, even though women outnumber men in some more developed nations.

The solutions, she says, are education and economic opportunity.

Overpopulation is one of the larger contributors to poverty, WuDunn said. “When you educate a girl, she has significantly fewer kids.” Girls who go to school get married later in life and educate their children “in a more enlightened way.”

WuDunn says her work is not just about helping reveal the plight of women and girls in many countries, it’s also about helping provide the groundwork for a movement to solve the problem. In the Western world, where many people have all their material needs satisfied, it’s an obligation to reach out and help others, she says.

WuDunn told the story of an American aid worker in Darfur who had seen great suffering but never broke down.

On a vacation back in the United States, she visited her grandmother and noticed a bird feeder in the backyard.

“She was in her grandmother’s backyard and she basically broke down. And she realized that not only was she able to feed and clothe and house herself but also see that people in her country were able to feed wild birds so that they don’t go hungry in the winter. She knew that with that luck and fortune also comes great responsibility.”

Here are excerpts from “Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide” by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn:
“So let us be clear about this up front: We hope to recruit you to join an incipient movement to emancipate women and fight global poverty by unlocking women’s power as economic catalysts.

That is the process under way — not a drama of victimization but of empowerment, the kind that transforms bubbly teenage girls from brothel slaves into successful businesswomen. This is a story of transformation. It is change that is already taking place, and change that can accelerate if you’ll just open your heart and join in. …

“The tide of history is turning women from beasts of burden and sexual playthings into full-fledged human beings. The economic advantages of empowering women are so vast as to persuade nations to move in that direction.

“Before long, we will consider sex slavery, honor killings and acid attacks as unfathomable as foot-binding. The question is how long that transformation will take and how many girls will be kidnapped into brothels before it is complete — and whether each of us will be part of that historical movement, or a bystander.”

Editor’s note: TED is a nonprofit organization devoted to “Ideas worth spreading,” which it makes available through talks posted on its website. Author Sheryl WuDunn spoke at the TED Global conference in July in Oxford, England.

From TED and CNN, September 5, 2010.

The brothers were convicted of shipping 44 laborers from Thailand and forcing them to work on their farm, part of a pipeline to the United States that allegedly cornered foreign field hands into low-paying jobs with few rights.

Aloun Farms may be too important to fail in an island state that once relied on pineapples and sugar cane but grows less than 15 percent of the food it consumes, according to supporters of defendants Alec and Mike Sou.

“The incarceration of Alec and Mike Sou would threaten our food security and could endanger our future sustainability on Oahu,” wrote Kioni Dudley, president of the community group Friends of Makakilo, in a letter asking U.S. District Judge Susan Oki Mollway for leniency. “Find some method of punishment which allows them to stay in their positions at Aloun Farms.”

The Sou brothers are asking for a light sentence with little or no jail time based in part on the idea that their farm is too valuable to the islands’ food supply to let it go untended. The plea deal they agreed to in January called for up to five years imprisonment.

Prosecutors accuse them of manipulating the Thai workers by promising at least a year’s employment at pay of $9.42 an hour, but instead delivering only a few months of work for little pay.

If the workers complained, Mike Sou threatened to send them home without any way to repay recruitment fees exceeding $20,000 that they borrowed from Thai money lenders to pay for their jobs, federal authorities claim.

The workers were trapped on the farm, forced to choose between long hours with low wages and an unpromising future in Thailand, said former farm worker Somporn Khanja, who arrived at the farm in 2004.

“I’d been lied to, but I couldn’t do anything about it,” the 45-year-old Khanja said through his wife, acting as an interpreter. “I hope justice is being done. I believe in American law. It takes so long, but it’s good. In America, we have to wait.”

In about 120 letters to the judge supporting the Sou brothers, community members praise their importance to Hawaii’s agriculture industry, their ability to provide up to 200 jobs at a time and their character.

Former Democratic Gov. Ben Cayetano called the Sou family’s immigration from Laos and creation of a farm a “remarkable success story.” Former Democratic Gov. John Waihee commended the Sous’ skill in transforming sugar fields into diversified farming.

Others who offered support to the brothers include the former head of the state Land Board, the state Department of Agriculture, the Hawaii Foodbank, competing farms, two banks who are owed money from the farms and former Aloun employees.

The Kapolei-based company grows a variety of foods including cantaloupe, lettuce, zucchini, apples, bananas, parsley, onions, watermelon, beans, eggplant, cabbage and pumpkin. Alec Sou is the farm’s president and general manager, and Mike Sou is its vice president and operations manager.

Human trafficking opponents say they deserve more than a slap on the wrist for enticing foreign workers with pledges of steady work and then revoking that offer after the laborers were already indebted and flown to the United States.

Federal authorities and some of the workers also have said they were housed in cramped mobile storage containers, told not to leave the farm after work and denied any pay at all for months. The Sous contested those allegations.

“This is America, and that kind of thing should not be allowable,” said Kathryn Xian, spokeswoman for the Pacific Alliance to Stop Slavery in Honolulu. “They’re basically ripping off the American way of life and exploiting it to the ultimate worst.”

The brothers acknowledge they failed to pay for the workers’ airfare as required by the U.S. agricultural guest worker program, and that employment contracts called for employment exceeding allowable time granted to foreign workers, according to court documents.

But they deny refusing to return passports, telling employees their contracts “were just a piece of paper used to deceive the federal government” and threatening deportation.

“Our people got caught up in something which they admit to. They wish they hadn’t done this, and they’re sorry for getting involved,” said defense attorney Eric Seitz, who represents Mike Sou. “Nobody was tortured, nobody was abused, nobody was physically threatened in any manner.”

Crackdowns on labor importation crimes are growing, as shown by last week’s federal indictment against employees of Los Angeles-based labor recruiting company Global Horizons Manpower Inc., which the FBI says is the largest human trafficking case ever charged in U.S. history.

Global Horizons is accused of enticing 400 workers from Thailand to U.S. farms based on false promises of lucrative jobs. Instead, recruiters allegedly confiscated the workers’ passports, disregarded employment contracts and threatened deportation — claims similar to those in the Aloun Farms case.

Nationwide, between 14,500 and 17,500 people are trafficked to the United States annually, according to an estimate by HumanTrafficking.org, which is managed by the Washington-based Academy for Educational Development, which works to improve global education, health and social and economic development.

The brothers have steadily grown in prominence since their parents started the farm in 1977. After starting with a small 5-acre plot of land, the Sous have since extended their growing capacity and crops.

Today, the farm’s 3,000 acres are the most productive in the islands. In Hawaii’s mild climate, they grow crops year-round.

The Sou family also has made political contributions, and Alec Sou sits on boards for homeless advocates and for the University of Hawaii’s College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources.

By Mark Niesse, Associated Press, September 5, 2010. Photo from Aloun Farms.

But when Alex O’Loughlin, Daniel Dae Kim and Grace Park stepped up to save the day in this scene from the new “Hawaii Five-0″ — each in a bulletproof vest, their handguns drawn and wearing fresh makeup — cell phone cameras took aim.

They’re the state’s newest heroes.

As fan favorites of the re-imagined police drama, the actors are helping to drive the state’s film and TV industry to a record-setting year, one that could see as much as $347 million in production spending, according to state estimates. That’s up more than 50 percent from the $229 million in 2007, the previous record year.

The state estimates the total economic impact of this year’s heavy production spending will be $539 million, as wages work their way through the community.

“This is a phenomenal year for production and for lots of reasons,” said Georja Skinner, administrator for the state’s creative services division, which oversees the Hawaii Film Office. “I think all of it is converging in this very unique way. The tax incentive is stable, it works well and is a benefit. And there are productions coming in.”

State tourism officials love it when productions put Hawaii front and center and “Hawaii Five-0″ is definitely doing that, Skinner said. The hype promoting the show, weeks before its Sept. 20 network premiere, includes TV spots worth millions of dollars in free advertising.

“You just can’t argue with Hawaii being in everyone’s living room,” Skinner said. “It not only keeps the production businesses afloat, it helps support the tourism message by not only having products that air this year but well into late 2011.”

“Hawaii Five-0″ is one of two new network series being shot in Hawaii — ABC’s medical drama “Off the Map” started shooting Aug. 30. And the state has already hosted eight feature film productions this year: Clint Eastwood’s “Hereafter”; the Bethany Hamilton biopic “Soul Surfer”; “The Descendants” with George Clooney; the locally written and produced “Get a Job”; “Uchu Senkan Yamato,” a Japanese film; Adam Sandler’s “Just Go With It”; “Caesar: Rise of the Apes,” which filmed for only a few days; and “Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides,” starring Johnny Depp.

In addition, “Battleship,” from Universal Pictures, which published reports say will cost $200 million, began last week, and “Journey to the Center of the Earth 2,” a big-budget production from New Line Cinema and Warner Bros., is in pre-production here even though it has not officially selected Hawaii as a location.

Add to that the final months of ABC’s “Lost,” which spent hundreds of millions of dollars in a six-season run that ended in May, and 2010 could be a tough act to follow.

All of it fuels the industry here, from background extras to electricians, production coordinators to caterers, set builders to location scouts.

“For all of us, it’s an incredible gold rush,” said Randy Spangler, a location manager who got his start in 1969 working on the original “Five-0.” “Needless to say, we’re all ecstatic. We are working our butts off.”

Spangler worked on “Lost” for all six seasons and when it wrapped this spring, he went to work on “Pirates.” From there it was on to “Off the Map.” In a business where a crew member can get laid off six times a year, that kind of consistency is great, he said.

“I always tell people that when you work in this industry you have to work like you are on unemployment all the time,” he said. “If you are not working you are on unemployment and if you are working you have to save for unemployment.”

Local production talent made up 40 percent of the crew employed by “Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides” during its two-month shoot on Kauai and Oahu this summer.

“Hawaii has a hard-working pool of behind-the-scenes talent forged by years of experience, so it made sense for us to utilize as many local crew as possible,” said Hollywood film and television mogul Jerry Bruckheimer, the film’s producer.

That also has been the experience at the CBS set of “Five-0,” said one of the show’s executive producers, Peter Lenkov. He had never worked in Hawaii before.

“It’s a lot smoother than I ever imagined,” he said. “You always expect when you go outside of L.A. you will face a lot of hurdles. But they have built great crews over time and are very production-friendly.”

The number of productions has kept Kauai-based set photographer Mario Perez on a frequent-flier schedule. Perez shoots stills on movie and television sets and he estimates his workload has increased 45 percent over last year.

“In March I flew six times in one week and every other day I worked on a different show,” he said. “I wish it was like this all the time. I wish next year we could count on as many productions as we had this year.”

But it’s a fickle industry. Shows can get canceled and other filming locations can suddenly look more attractive. “Things can change in a heartbeat,” Perez said. “My normal saying is you don’t know you are working until the first paycheck clears.”

Leroy Jenkins, owner of Production Partners, a Honolulu-based logistics company for film and TV projects, said the work done in 2010 will pay dividends in the years to come.

“I think this is going to show Hawaii in a really good light in the future,” he said. “Finally, Hawaii is on the map. I think we have shown L.A. and the rest of the industry that Hawaii is a great 12-month filming location.”

There’s no single reason for the successful year. Big projects like “Pirates,” which was expected to generate more than $85 million in direct and indirect spending in the islands, certainly helped. A typical network TV series works from a budget of $2 million to $2.5 million an episode, with two-thirds of that usually spent in Hawaii.

Many in the industry here cite a state tax incentive as a large contributing factor this year. Approved in 2006, the Act 88 refundable tax credit provides a 15 percent refund on Oahu and a 20 percent refund on the neighbor islands.

The tax credit gave rise to steady work, which in turn elevated the skills of production crews here, said Walea Constantinau, commissioner for the Honolulu Film Office. This year, the film and TV industry flexed its new-found muscles.

“I think a lot of people are looking at this year and realizing how economically meaningful this industry is to the islands,” she said. “This year, more than ever, shows how many lives it touches, how it affects the economy.”

But to keep the growth coming, the industry here will need to examine the amount of studio space it has. The state owns a single, 16,500-square-foot sound stage, at Diamond Head. It has been leased to ABC since the early years of “Lost” and will be used for “Off the Map.”

Constantinau likens the situation to owning a delivery company with only one vehicle. When “The Descendants” filmed here, it set up shop in the empty CompUSA building on Ala Moana Boulevard. CBS had hoped to take over there, but wound up in an empty warehouse adjacent to the old Honolulu Advertiser building.

Studio space is as critical to the state’s reputation as are lush jungle locations. Every time Constantinau sees a big-box store go out of business, she sees it as a potential sound stage.

“If you want to develop as a production center you need to know what are the critical elements you need to address,” Constantinau said. “So instead of only getting half the movie, you get the whole movie.”

Back at the plaza outside the Pacific Rim Bank, the background extras — that is, the panicked customers — stood around after rushing out of the bank for the 10th time. Or was it the 11th? Even a short, simple scene can take hours to shoot.

For Kim Adams, the repetition was a blur, but she didn’t care. She was a background extra on ABC’s “Lost” and knows the routine.

“There’s a lot of work for actors in Hawaii,” said Adams, the owner of a Kailua cleaning service. “It’s so exciting. It gives a lot of local people a chance to experience what it’s like to be in Hollywood but not have to be there.”

By Mike Gordon, Honolulu Star-Advertiser, September 5, 2010.

The document will relieve from criminal liability persons who had committed commercial or official crimes between March 24, 2005 and April 7, 2010, Kyrgyz Justice Minister Aida Salyanova said.

Senior and middle-range officials who had committed crimes during the rule of Kyrgyz ex-President Kurmanbek Bakiyev may be included in the amnesty, in case they returned the stolen money. The sum of the financial loss will be defined by a special commission.

“A civilized method to return illegally obtained financial assets will be offered,” Otunbayeva commented on the move.

The officials accused of commercial crimes will have the possibility to hire a lawyer to vindicate their honor.

Investigations into the crimes, committed by Bakiyev-era senior officials are already completed, Kyrgyz Prosecutor General Baitemir Ibraev said. All the accused will have the right to apply for amnesty, he added.

The unprecedented amnesty is aimed at supporting the country’s economy, which is currently devastated, experts said.

Bakiyev fled the country in April amid large-scale opposition protests that brought to power opposition forces led by Roza Otunbayeva. Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said he took Bakiyev under his “personal” protection.

In May, the Kyrgyz interim government first requested the former president’s extradition, accusing him of ordering the shooting of civilians during the conflict, as well as abuse of power and corruption during his leadership. Bakiyev has denied the claims.

Belarus rejected the extradition request, saying the interim Kyrgyz government was not legitimate.

In late June, a referendum on a new constitution was held in the republic as part of the interim authorities’ efforts to return the country to democratic rule. Otunbayeva was approved in the referendum as the country’s president for a provisional period until 2012.

Bakiyev and his relatives have also been accused of instigating the recent clashes between ethnic Kyrgyz and minority Uzbeks in the south of Kyrgyzstan, Bakiyev’s former stronghold. The riots claimed the lives of some 300 people, according to official figures. Kyrgyz officials say the real death toll may exceed 2,000.

From RIA Novosti, September 5, 2010.
Photo credit: Sergey Guneev

The Belarusian Prosecutor General’s Office will inquire into the death of opposition journalist and human rights activist Aleh Byabenin, whose hanged body was found on Friday.

Byabenin, 36, was one of the leading figures of the human rights organization Charter97 and ran the Charter97 website. The journalist’s relatives found his corpse hanged in his summer house on the outskirts of Minsk.

“Members of the Prosecutor’s Office are currently working at the scene. Deputy Prosecutor General Andrei Shved has left for there,” Petr Kiselev, spokesman for the Prosecutor General’s Office said.

According to the preliminary estimates, the journalist committed suicide, a police spokesman said.

Byabenin’s body was found hanging, an overturned stool lied abreast. Two empty bottles of the Belorusky Balzam alcoholic drink were found in the house. The corpse has no injuries, the police spokesman added.

Charter97 International Coordinator Andrei Sannikov said he does not believe that Byabenin killed himself. “I was at the scene…Lots of facts give raise to doubts. No suicide note was found, and his last SMS to friends showed they planned to go to the cinema,” Sannikov said.

Byabenin graduated from the Belarusian State University, in the 1990′s he was deputy editor-in-chief in the Imya newspaper. He launched the Charter97 website in 1998. The journalist had a wife and two sons.

Byabenin had been harassed by the authorities on numerous occasions. In April 1997 he was abducted and in 1999, he was nearly beaten to death.

The British Index on Censorship group expressed deep concerns over the reported crime. “People in Minsk are very nervous, especially those close to Aleh…In recent months he had become increasingly concerned over the safety of fellow human rights activists and feared a return of the atmosphere of 1997-1999, when many dissidents disappeared in suspicious circumstances and Aleh himself was nearly killed,” Mike Harris, Public Affairs Manager of Index on Censorship, who is currently in Belarus, said.

http://charter97.org/en/news/2010/9/3/31879/

From RIA Novosti, September 5, 2010. Photo from Charter97.

Some 40,000 people were deported from China to Japan during the World War II, the majority of them worked at the Japanese heavy industries. At least 7,000 of those deported died, China says.

Chinese World War II victims have been failed to receive compensation from the Japanese government over the last 20 years, that’s why they will now try to sue a private Japanese company, lawyers said.

The Chinese World War II victims deported to Japan will demand an apology and $14,700 in compensation each, lawyers said.

In late March, Holocaust Victims from Poland, Russia, Ukraine and Belarus have asked the Deutsche Bahn to pay them 445 million Euros in compensation for deporting people to concentration camps during World War II.

The Holocaust victims believe the German national railway company is the moral and historical successor to Deutsche Reichsbahn, the railway company of Nazi Germany.

The successor company Deutsche Bahn has so far refused to pay compensation directly, claiming that it supports a foundation to assist forced labor victims.

From Xinhua and RIA Novosti, September 5, 2010.

Los Angeles-based Global Horizons Manpower CEO Mordechai Orian, 45, surrendered to federal authorities in Honolulu earlier Friday, a day after the FBI had tried to arrest him at his Southern California home but found he wasn’t there.

The Israeli head of a labor recruiting company accused of exploiting 400 workers from Thailand and forcing them to work on U.S. farms pleaded not guilty Friday, in part of what the Federal Bureau of Investigation calls the largest human-trafficking case U.S. history. Los Angeles-based Global Horizons Manpower CEO Mordechai Orian, 45, surrendered to federal authorities in Honolulu earlier Friday, a day after the FBI had tried to arrest him at his Southern California home but found he wasn’t there.

Although the FBI had been investigating Global Horizons for a number of years, when an arrest warrant was served on Orian, it appeared to come as a surprise. Although he was on a business trip to Texas when federal agents descended on his Malibu home, his wife said they handcuffed her and by her account acted aggressively without any justification. Orian denies all the allegations against him, and expressed hope that he would be released on bond by Wednesday, despite a prosecution request that he be held until the end of legal proceedings.

On Thursday, Orian’s public relations adviser, Kara Lujan, was asked by her client to conduct negotiations with the FBI for his surrender. She said Federal agents agreed to a surrender in Hawaii on the condition that they would be shown an airplane ticket to the state. She said he landed in Honolulu and took a taxi to his lawyer’s office, where FBI representatives were waiting, as agreed. Lujan said Global Horizons has not been in business for four years and that Orian was working with other companies.

Three of his employees and two Thailand-based recruiters also were charged in an indictment announced Thursday. Orian appeared in Honolulu federal court with his ankles chained. He was represented by a court-appointed attorney based on his contention that he couldn’t afford one himself. He faces a maximum sentence of 70 years imprisonment. He was ordered deported from the United States last year, but has remained in the country during his appeal.

U.S. Attorney Susan French called Orian’s arrest a major saga because his public relations agency had told authorities varying stories that he was in Los Angeles, Texas and Albuquerque, New Mexico. Contrary to Lujan’s statement, she said they didn’t know his whereabouts until he had already caught a taxi from the Honolulu airport.

Of the four U.S. defendants named in the indictment, three have been arrested and the FBI agreed to allow the fourth to appear in court for his first appearance next week. The federal government intends to work with Thai authorities to apprehend the two suspects there.

By Natasha Mozgovaya, Haaretz, September 5, 2010.

ElBaradei returned to Egypt earlier this year to begin a campaign calling for electoral reform and constitutional amendments that would allow a credible candidate to challenge the ruling party in a presidential election to be held next year.

The Nobel Laureate told the independent Al-Dustor daily newspaper on Saturday that the pictures on Facebook were the government’s “usual response” to his calls for reform.

“Such a campaign is the usual and only response of the regime towards whoever demands democracy, which is the only way for freedom and economic reform and social justice,” ElBaradei told the newspaper.

The more than 30 photos, which were also run by some Egyptian newspapers, were posted under the title: “Secrets of the ElBaradei family.”

Some show his daughter, Laila, in swimsuits at the beach and sitting at events in front of what appeared to be bottles of alcohol.

Drinking is forbidden in Islam and conservative Muslims would generally consider a woman appearing publicly in a bathing suit to be immodest.

The Facebook site also shows an image of what it purports is Laila’s real profile from the social networking site listing her religious status as agnostic.

A spokesman for the ruling National Democratic Party said it had no connection to the Facebook campaign, which he called an attempt at “character assassination”.

“I think this is a very grave mistake, violating the privacy of others,” said Ali Eddin Helal.

Brotherhood response

In response to the publication, a senior Muslim Brotherhood official said the influential Islamist opposition movement was not interested in ElBaradei’s personal life.

“We don’t support any personality in particular. We agree on demands for reform and are part of a coalition that has people from different streams, including liberals,” said Essam Erian, a Brotherhood politburo member.

“Of course they will have their own agenda and lives. Our priority is reform.”

ElBaradei, 68, has helped to galvanise the country’s opposition since he returned to the country in February.

The former head of the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency received a hostile welcome from the government press, with a leading newspaper alleging he had Swedish citizenship and foreign support.

Government-controlled media have tried to undermine him by describing him as out of touch with Egyptian society because he lived abroad for many years and accusing him of being a stooge for the United States.

ElBaradei has ruled out running for presidential elections next year unless the constitution, which places restrictions on independent candidates, is reformed.

Shortlived campaign

Earlier this week, posters supporting Egypt’s intelligence chief as a candidate in next year’s election were removed from Cairo’s streets hours after they appeared.

An independent newspaper was also ordered to pu